


words are weapons to a liar

by DreamerWisherLiar



Series: the best-laid plans [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Manipulation, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-15 13:16:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16063925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerWisherLiar/pseuds/DreamerWisherLiar
Summary: What if Milady found out Athos faked his death much sooner? AU from partway through 1x10, right after the 'duel'.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is based a little on this tumblr post: https://automaticdreamlandkid.tumblr.com/post/174985893259/dentelliere-automaticdreamlandkid-milathos
> 
> I hope you guys like it!
> 
> I didn't check the archive warnings for them because I didn't think they were graphic enough to count, but be aware there is still violence and references to non-con.

She feels… empty.

She didn’t think she would feel like this. She thought she would feel… what? Triumph, certainly. Satisfaction. There was a moment when she’d felt that rush as he lay dying, a harsh, cruel sort of joy in it, the knowledge that she finally won, that he finally suffered as he’d made her suffer. He was gone, he was dead, he would never harm her again. No one else would ever see her that weak. She’d watched him die from a distance, stunned, exhilarated, confused, amazed. It was what she’d wanted.

But she’d also thought her terrible, all-consuming rage would bleed away now she’d succeeded, that she would find some kind of peace. And yes, her rage has started to drain from her. She was right about that. Unfortunately, she’d refused to recognise what was hidden beneath the rage, that awful pain and betrayal, the heartbreak and loss. That’s not gone. If anything, the rage dying down makes it worse, makes it clearer to her. He’s dead – the final proof she could love, the last weak point she ever had, the only thing in the world that could rouse in her feelings besides greed, fear or cold self-preservation. Without him, the world seems… yes, empty is the word. And she feels empty as well.

She tries to regain her horrible fury, tries to remember the other night. The rough hand gripping her neck (how dare he, _how dare he_ , to go for the throat again), the hard gun bruising her back, the sour smell of wine on his breath as he spelled out what he thought of her, the way she’d thought for a fleeting moment of terror that he really would pull the trigger. But unfortunately, she also remembers the drunken, open-mouthed press of lips against her hair, against her ear, as he held her as close as if they were lovers, hatred burning almost like passion. 

D’Artagnan’s waiting for her, she knows. She should go to him. She needs to find out what the other Musketeers know, discover if they have any evidence at all and get it back if they do. Sarazin will want instructions from her as well, what to do with Madame Bonacieux, what the next step to undertake is. Richelieu will need an update soon. There are a lot of places she should be.

But the moment she saw Aramis hurrying through the street, glancing behind him to check for pursuers, she hadn’t been able to do anything other than follow. He’ll lead her to – to her husband. To her husband’s body. It wasn’t at the Garrison, perhaps it’s in one of the city’s morgues. Athos was never brave enough to see her corpse, and although that’s the only reason she’s alive a part of her still thinks him a coward for it. She’ll prove she has more courage than him – though who she’s proving it to, now that he’s dead, she couldn’t say. A lot of the meaning in her life has died with him, she thinks with a sort of hollow wryness. How can she rage, when there’s now no one to rage against? Why be the Cardinal’s creature, if she can’t take vicious satisfaction in acting like the monster he thought her to be?

Well, to survive. That’s a reason. She has always excelled at survival. 

Aramis surveys the street suspiciously again, and again he misses her. No one sees her when she doesn’t want to be seen. There’s a reason why she’s been so successful at her chosen careers, although ‘chosen’ may not be the right word.

There’s something wrong with Aramis’s expression, she thinks, suddenly tensing, instincts kicking in. There’s no sign of anger, sadness, grief, anything you’d expect when a dear friend had died only hours before. She’d seen his face from a distance as Athos stood before a firing squad, and he hadn’t had that blank unconcern. She even thinks she sees a smile playing across his lips. And then he goes into a house – a house that looks nothing like a morgue.

She can’t follow him, of course. Not even a Musketeer could fail to notice that. But there’s a low roof nearby that will let her see through half the windows in the place. She knows the streets of Paris as only one born to them can, and it’s easy enough to get up there – a backstreet, some little stairs, a half-minute of slightly-undignified climbing more the province of a thief than a lady, and she’s got the angle she needs.

When Milady sees him, she nearly falls.

He’s _alive_.

There’s a curtain, of course, but it’s thin enough for her to see his profile, watch him pacing. She’d know Athos from the slightest glimpse of him, and this is more than enough. He’s not dead. He’s not even injured, judging by the way he’s moving, the way he gestures as he speaks to Aramis. Her husband is _alive_.

The rush of involuntary emotion at the sight of him would be enough to make her faint, if she was the sort of woman who fainted. It certainly sends her dizzy, gasping with the shock of it. The surge of relief and happiness is almost overwhelming, and she doesn’t want it, she doesn’t want any of it. She forces it down, tries to pull other emotions to the top, tries to be disappointed, furious, filled with hatred. It’s difficult to do so, but in under a minute she has herself under control – she buries relief, and finds rage.

It’s not the old rage, but a new kind. They played her. They fooled her. Even up on the roof with no one to see her face, she keeps her expression resigned, even amused, as if this doesn’t upset her at all. But inside, she’s fuming. It’s quite a shallow, surface sort of anger, made up of offended pride, slight humiliation, and justified fear of the Cardinal’s reaction to this, but it’s enough to keep her steady. She won’t faint or cry or do anything else foolish, she’ll react, she’ll counterattack. She doesn’t lose.

She can’t seem to drag her gaze away from him, greedy for even this blurred sight of him through the curtain, but eventually he moves away from the window and frees her.

X_X_X_X_X

“Where have you _been_?” d’Artagnan demands the moment she enters, an edge of panic to his voice. She’s been gone for some time. “I need help. Aramis and Porthos will never forgive Athos’s death. They’ll want revenge.”

She made plans on the way back, but they don’t require her to pretend she’s ignorant that Athos lives. Sadly, they do require this little fool’s survival, at least for the moment, and require him to believe she cares about him. In hindsight, her comment about blowing his brains out before was unfortunate, if satisfying.

“That’s no doubt true, but Athos is not dead,” she says bluntly.

He gapes at her. She’s gone off-script in their little play, and he fumbles for words, suddenly having to improvise. “What do you mean? I shot him.”

“You’re living proof that being shot is not invariably fatal,” she points out.

“But Aramis said – Porthos said -”

“I suppose they’re better at causing death than identifying it,” she drawls. “Regardless, my husband lives. Badly wounded, no doubt, but not enough. He was seen by a source I trust more than I trust those friends of yours.” She recalls that she’s supposed to be being nice to him – it’s not her strong suit, but she can generally fake it for short periods. She lets her expression soften, looking up at him, and says with an edge of tremulousness, “But I’m truly grateful that you tried to help me, d’Artagnan. It’s been a long time since someone cared enough even for that.”

She kisses him very lightly on the cheek, a sweet, chaste gesture, and ignores the baffled look on his face. They aren’t writing the play anymore. They have no idea what happens next. She’s taken the reins. The thought gives her a pleasant smugness, only slightly dimmed by the knowledge of what she must do next. It’s time to leave him to run back to his little friends in a panic, while she sets things up.

“They _will_ come after you, regardless, but they might wait a few days until Athos is recovered,” she tells him. “Don’t worry, though: I’ll sort it out. Athos’s issues are with me, not you. I’ll speak to the Cardinal.”

“I’ll come with you,” he says, trying to seize the opportunity.

“No, you won’t.” She’s firm. “It’s not safe. They haven’t found you here yet, but if any of the Musketeers see you out and about, they might well try for revenge. And duelling is illegal, had you forgotten? The guards may be after you too. Let me deal with Richelieu.”

She wonders if d’Artagnan will check back at his old lodging and find out that the draper’s wife is missing. She can’t return the woman without her setting off a squawk and giving the game away, but she also can’t kill her or keep her indefinitely. It would have been better by far if she hadn’t had Sarazin snatch the girl at all, if she’d realised just a bit earlier that the duel was a sham and that this would be about mind-games instead of muskets.

But no, she can’t think like that. Kidnapping Constance might cause an upset to her plans, just like it might have when she believed d’Artagnan would come to their side, but she’s still too useful as insurance not to be worth taking. If the Musketeers find out what’s going on before Milady wants them to, she can barter the woman’s life for her own, or use her as bait for a trap. Hopefully she can keep them all distracted enough that no one notices Madame Bonacieux’s absence, though.

Sarazin’s another problem, of course, but she’s dealt with him before. Odds are she’ll find a use for him and his people before the end besides keeping the charming Constance company, and wring everything she can get out of his promise of help. If she can pull this off perfectly, the Cardinal might keep her from having to pay up her end of the deal, and if not, she’ll be too dead for it to matter. There’s nothing she can do about it now, either way. She has no better weapon in this game than her wits – but they’ve kept her alive so far.

X_X_X_X_X

“So you have yet to kill even a single Musketeer,” Richelieu says incredulously, raising his eyebrows at her.

“You’re focusing on the least important part.” She doesn’t let her nervousness show, but she can feel it fizzing beneath her skin. The Cardinal has been becoming more dangerous lately, especially to her. 

“I’m not surprised you’d prefer me to ignore your failure, since it’s becoming an almost daily disappointment,” he snaps.

“My darling husband could have killed me in that pantomime, but chose not to,” she says, words tripping out a little faster than she means them to. “But then, I’m a little fish, aren’t I?”

“Is it supposed to be news that they’re after me? All the more reason to kill them quickly.”

“Treville as well?” she asks baldly.

That gives him pause. “I don’t…”

“He knows, obviously. He joined in their little performance. There’s no chance they have any evidence, not if they’re reduced to this charade – but whatever suspicions they hold, he shares. I can’t imagine the death of four of his best men will incline him to give up pursuing it.” She looks away, pretending not to notice his consternation – it’s one thing to kill Musketeers, another to kill their Captain. The King’s reaction would be impossible to predict. “For killing them to have any point, I’d have to kill him as well, and that seems a poor plan.”

He hesitates, but then his face firms. “You wouldn’t have come to me unless you have a better one. Share it, then.”

“You don’t need them dead,” she says. “More death will leave to more possible evidence, arouse more suspicion, cause more problems. You need them _discredited_.” Her smile is the edge of a knife. “And luckily, that’s much easier to do.”

With no evidence, all Treville and the Musketeers have is their word – but if the King thinks they’re incompetent, biased, or even actively treacherous, it won’t matter what they say, or who they say it to. They won’t even dare to continue looking into the matter, not if the King loses his patience with them, not if continuing could lead to the Musketeers being dismantled and Treville falling into complete disgrace. Richelieu’s hold on His Majesty will be uncontested. A few Musketeers dead means nothing, but Treville’s favourites being utterly discredited (and him partially discredited through them, even if he escapes direct blame himself through the King’s fondness) would cause a tectonic shift in the competing powers behind the throne.

“What do you need?” he says, after a pause. His gaze is steady and shrewd, his earlier rage controlled but not diminished. However, it’s not turned towards her now. He looks affronted by Treville’s attempt to manipulate him, to fool him. Good.

“They thought to make us trust d’Artagnan,” she says, almost idly. She feels back in control now, at least to an extent – but if this goes badly, she has no illusions. He’ll have her killed in a heartbeat. “I want to reverse their little plan on them. I think I can make them trust me – or at least trust me enough.”

He barks out a harsh laugh. “What kind of fools would trust you, after all of this?”

“Handsome, chivalrous men are always fools,” she observes, “And they’re always willing to believe that a woman would do anything for the love of them.”

“Your husband?” He guesses.

That surprises a laugh out of her. “ _Please._ Nothing on earth would convince my husband of my enduring love for him. But they might believe my adoration for the young Gascon.” She realises she’s playing with her choker, and stills her hand. “He is so very pretty, after all. And what woman could fail to love a young gallant willing to kill for her?”

X_X_X_X_X

When she knocks on the door to where Athos is staying, it’s Porthos who answers. His expression is one of the most amusing sights she’s seen in some time, for all that he controls his shock quickly. D’Artagnan must have warned them she was aware Athos had survived, but perhaps they didn’t realise she knows where they’re hiding him as well. The most important question – will they realise she knows she was fooled and is fooling them in turn? Or will they try and continue with their playacting, sticking as closely to their plan as her new knowledge allows?

She’s considered carefully how to play this. No tears, no pleading, no sweetness, no softness or obvious sentiment. She can’t tip her hand by overacting. They know she’s hard and cold and clever, and anything else would be an immediate giveaway. But clearly they believe she has a soft spot for the young Gascon, or at least that she takes pleasure in having him wound around her little finger. If they thought there was any chance she’d leave d’Artagnan to bleed to death in the dirt, they’d never have attempted this plan to begin with, would they? She needs to twist their understanding, make it seem like instead of viewing d’Artagnan as a valuable prize to bring to the Cardinal, she sees him as her prize and the Cardinal’s interest is simply an excuse.

She didn’t expect to feel gleeful at the prospect of doing this. It’s the same almost giddy anticipation she experienced following Athos down that alleyway. A chance to taunt him, poke, prod, play with him like a cat with a toy – a chance to see his face curl into a scowl, to watch his body tense with futile rage, to feel his breath against her. Perhaps she has been looking for excuses to interact with him for months now, and this is an ironclad one. She didn’t entirely need this visit for her plan, but since she can use said plan to justify it, she hadn’t been able to resist.

“I wish to talk with my husband,” she says.

“Best find a priest or a prophet, then,” Porthos replies. His anger and grief is unconvincing, although better than Aramis’s. The Musketeers should not give up their commissions to take to the stage, that’s for certain.

“I know he survived his injury,” she says, with absolute conviction. “He was seen. I’m not here to hurt him, simply to talk. Now let me in.” 

It takes him a moment to decide, contemplating her, dark eyes bright with worry he’s trying to conceal with much less skill than her. Eventually, he gives a sharp nod and gestures for to follow him inside. 

D’Artagnan must have left already, then. That’s a relief – if the entire sham falls apart so completely she can’t pretend to be unaware of it, she’ll be forced to change her plans yet again. Of course, even if this fails, she’s lost nothing – or at least nothing she wouldn’t have lost anyway. She prays her losses won’t include her head.

How arrogant of them, to think they could play her! And it might have worked, as well – the Cardinal was right when he said that Athos distracts her. It’s hard to keep a cool head when her broken heart aches like that, not that she would ever admit to feeling it, and Athos’s rage the other night was quite convincing. But she can be convincing too. Words are her weapon, not theirs, and they should stick to their swords and die on them as righteous men always do.

Porthos enters Athos’s room without her, closing the door in her face briefly as they have some sort of whispered argument. She wonders if it’s a power play, making her wait, but that seems too sophisticated for them – like as not it really is just an argument. Eventually, Porthos opens the door like the butler they used to have, and announces he’ll see her.

As if there were ever any doubt. She might be the one who seeks him out, but he is always, always the one to move closer once she has. He lunged at her in their burning house, he had to be physically held back at the trial, he stepped forwards as if to trap her as she leant against that alley wall. And the other night, walking behind her, causing her neck to prickle and her breath to come faster, making her feel like prey, and then his hand closing around her scarred throat like a vice –

“Hello, Athos,” she says coolly. “You’re looking… lively.”

He’s not, but she doubts it’s from a bullet. It looks more like the aftereffects of wine. Surprisingly, he’s standing, although he’s wearing the bloodstained shirt and has bandages providing bulky covering below it (she imagines d’Artganan and Porthos hastily winding them about him as he glowers, adjusting the story as quickly as they can). He should lie down, take advantage of the excuse she’s given him to lay abed and nurse his hangover – but no, he won’t show weakness while she’s here, just as he wouldn’t if he really was injured. Maybe she’s not the only one afraid of overacting. 

“It seems we are both prone to resurrection,” he drawls, his face expressionless. He takes a step towards her, crossing his arms, and she resists the urge to move back. It’s even harder to resist the urge to step forward as well.

She can feel Porthos standing behind her, the two of them trapping her between them. A part of her mind notes their locations, calculates their speed, strength, weaponry, tactics, works out what she should do if one makes a violent move. They shouldn’t, but if they do: a knife to Porthos’s thigh to put him down to the floor, a musket levelled at Athos’s head, and then probably the window. It’s a significant drop, but she’s walked away from worse, and she knows the streets better than these fools are likely to.

“What was the plan? Did you think d’Artagnan and I would believe ourselves safe if you were dead, allowing you to plan an ambush later?” Her eyebrow quirks upwards in derision. “How underhanded.”

“Well, if _you_ think so, I should be flattered. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be providing comfort to your lover? Or is the boy nothing to you now he’s failed?”

“Comfort’s all very well, but I’m no ministering angel, and I prefer to provide more direct methods of assistance,” she says. “I’m here to ask you to leave him be.”

“Leave him be?” He raises an eyebrow as well, and for much the same reason, mirroring her. “He shot me.”

“Because you shot him.” She can feel the same strange energy between them that’s always been there. Once, it made them feel alive, like they were almost glowing with happiness. Now it crackles around them like a lightning storm, tearing at their tempers and shredding their self-control, pushing them both steadily closer to a crash. “I’d say the two of you are even. And your grudge… your grudge has always been with me. D’Artagnan’s done nothing to you, not really. I have livres enough for him to flee Paris and make a life elsewhere, and I suggest you let him go.”

“Done _nothing_ to me?” Athos might be telling himself he’s pretending anger for effect, but she can see the rage in his eyes, and it’s genuine. “He lied to me.”

“Such heat! He told you himself he didn’t know.” She meets his gaze steadily. He might not believe the truth on her lips, but clearly he believes what d’Artagnan told him, and he must have said the same. Porthos is listening as well – every truth she tells will buy her a little more belief for when she needs it. “Nor did I. It was before he’d even met you, how could either of us have predicted you’d become the best of friends?”

“It was an _accident_ that you cuckolded me with my closest friend? Is that what you’re claiming?”

This is absurd. She’s enjoying it immensely. “Well, I wouldn’t say the cuckolding was accidental. I didn’t trip and fall into his bed. But really, he could have been anyone back then, just a pretty stranger met by chance, a pleasant encounter. Now he’s someone I care for, and I’m asking you to keep this between us and not harm him further.”

“Someone you care for.” His voice is flat. “Do you really expect me to believe that? You’ve never cared for another person in your life.”

“As if you know anything about my life,” she says with quiet savagery, before remembering her role. A wicked woman redeemed by love: a sickening cliché she has no patience for. “You of all people know d’Artagnan’s exceptional. I want him out of this, out of Paris, even. I want him safe.”

“Without you?”

“Now why would I want to give up such a promising lover?” she asks without hesitation, enjoying the flash of jealousy in his eyes. “If you’re willing to let go of your absurd notions of revenge, I’ll go with him, of course. If not, I suppose he’ll have to leave alone. But I’d prefer the former, personally. Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

“ _I’ve_ done enough?” His self-control visibly starts to weaken and he steps towards her, teeth clenched as tightly as his fists are now. It sends a thrill of fear through her. Sadly, she’s always been far too thrilled by fear. A person with more common sense would step back. “I could kill you where you stand, injured or not.”

“Could you? Well, try not to bow out midway this time,” she taunts him spitefully. “You know I do so hate it when men have no ability to follow through on their promises.”

She waits. He doesn’t attack, though she can tell from his posture that he wants to. He’s visibly fuming, but his gaze is like ice.

“Well? Nothing? Interesting.” She smirks at him. “This may not be neutral ground, but it’s still a negotiation, and it’s dishonourable to bring threats to a peace summit. It’s even worse to bring empty ones. Your friends didn’t seem so eager for you to get your revenge the other night. Musketeers aren’t known for killing defenceless women, are they?”

“We could arrest you, let the law deal with you,” Porthos speaks unexpectedly from behind her. “We could even just capture you for ourselves if we wanted. We don’t need to kill you. It was reckless, coming here.”

“I know. I rather thought that alone would prove I mean what I say. I’m here, trying to make amends, willing to risk _anything_ you can threaten. You can take me if you want -” another flash to Athos’s eyes, and this time she deciphers the meaning of it, after her slightly intimating tone on the word _anything_ , and she nearly laughs. “- oh, not _that_ sort of taking. What kind of woman do you think I am? I meant arrest me, kill me, what have you. I’ve put myself at your mercy coming here, haven’t I? Why would I do that?”

“For d’Artagnan, you say,” he growls. Another step closer. She can taste the wine on his breath just like she could the other night, see every emotion that roils in his blue-grey eyes as she did in that alleyway. If she moved just one step as well, she could press herself against him, her body to his, back into his embrace, the only place that ever felt like home. But homes burn. “But then, nothing you say is ever true. I remember that much.”

“You must be able to see traces of yourself in d’Artagnan, just as I can,” she says, knowing the accuracy of her words makes the cut crueller. She can see it in the way he flinches. The best lies are based on truth – or the worst ones, she supposes, depending on your vantage point. “You, but a younger version, a better one, one who can forgive, one who isn’t cruel. Do you begrudge me that?”

He barks out a harsh laugh, looking away from her, unable to stomach the sight of her speaking of another man like this. “You think d’Artagnan would be any more likely to excuse your actions than I am? If he’s like me, don’t you fear the day he looks at you and knows you for what you are?”

“Well, perhaps he isn’t _quite_ like you,” she says, with a negligent shrug, although in her mind’s eyes she can see Athos slumped against a doorframe, betrayal in every line of his face as he betrayed her in turn. “He’s forgiven me before, after all – for a murder, even. He doesn’t worship honour as you do. Maybe instead he recognises the importance of kindness, forgiveness, love…”

“When have you ever valued any of those qualities, or possessed them, _Milady_?”

Her latest name sounds like a curse in his mouth, and she likes it more than she should. It doesn’t make her merciful. “I was kind once, when I was happy. But there proved to be no future in it. The other two… why do you think I’m here, Athos, if not to try to rediscover them? Give me d’Artagnan, and let me leave. You won’t regret it.”

He stares at her, and now his expression is beyond fury, into pain. There’s still disbelief there, but jealous hurt reigns. Apparently she’s not the only one unable to keep a cool head when it comes to them. “You can’t be serious. You’re not capable – you can’t – you will _never_ persuade me that d’Artagnan is more to you than your dupe. And the things you’ve done – someday we _will_ arrest you. You’ll hang for your crimes, Anne, and this time I will see that it sticks.”

Except that if they do that, they have next to no chance of proving anything against the Cardinal, and they know it. Even without looking back, she can feel Porthos’s uncertainty, and despite his promise, Athos doesn’t make any attempt to hold her here. He said ‘someday’, after all, and she supposes he means at an unknown point in the future when they have all the evidence against Richelieu they require. Until then, she’s their only way to get to him, she’s the thread that ties the Cardinal and Gallagher together, and her execution would leave them without a single lead to follow.

Even her torture and confession would get them nothing – she’d hardly be considered a reliable source, after all. Of course, she has much more information than they could possibly realise about the Cardinal’s secrets, his network, and even his private discussions with the King. A full and frank confession from her might not destroy the King’s faith in his First Minister, but it would certainly damage it, given the conversations she’s been privy to, the things she knows. But they have no way of knowing how much access she’s had at the Louvre, how many times she’s hidden behind walls to listen to the King’s drunken tantrums. Even if they did, and were willing to torture a woman for that information (unlikely), it would hardly be coherent enough at that point to be useful. They have no options but trickery, and that’s barely an option at all.

She hides her smugness. “I wasn’t aware you had proof of any crimes severe enough to warrant execution, besides the old one,” she comments, taunting him again. “Am I to hang for the death of Thomas d’Athos twice?”

“You could,” Porthos says from behind her, apparently angered enough by the expression of agony on Athos’s face to weigh in again. “We could get some old witnesses, finally see you punished for what you did back then. Might take a while, but we could do that.”

“What a lot of effort you’re willing to go to.” This time, she does turn her head to look at Porthos. “I had no idea the Musketeers were so dedicated to avenging rapists and punishing their intended victims.” She sees the confusion in his face for a moment before he suppresses it, the lightning glance of query at Athos, and it’s enough to make slicing into her own old wound seem almost worth it. “Oh, did Athos neglect to mention any details that might not reflect well on him? How unlike him. He’s normally so open about his past.”

“Your lies about my brother are irrelevant.” Athos’s voice is a cracked, broken thing, and his eyes are barely better. Every time she brings up his brother it ruins him like this, and she wonders if it’s memories of Thomas’s death that haunt him, or if it’s his own doubts and fears which floor him this way. He must sometimes wonder if she was telling the truth, surely – even with all his certainty of her monstrousness, it must have crossed his mind once or twice that her story better matches the circumstances of Thomas d’Athos’s death than the story he’d chosen to believe. “It’s your other lies that would see you hang, Madame de la Chapelle, Anne de Breuil, Milady de Winter. We won’t arrest you now, but someday we will find proof.”

“We work with the law,” Porthos says, which seems like a blatant falsehood to her, but which backs up Athos’s excuse not to arrest her. “And the law will get you eventually.”

She feels satisfaction flow through her, now, knowing she was right, watching them scramble to come up with reasons not to kill her or arrest her because if they do, they have no plans.

“Even assuming that’s true… will you arrest me? Can you watch me hang again? And what do you think d’Artagnan is likely to do in response, if you do?” She smiles at him, a cold, cruel smile that she knows doesn’t reach her eyes, and crosses her arms. “Agree to my deal, and we don’t have to find out. If you let me leave with d’Artagnan, you need never see me again.”

Here are the elements she’s fairly sure their plan requires: d’Artagnan in Paris, her in Paris, her alive and not in prison, the Cardinal trusting both of them. But if she offers what they want, if she smooths their path, they’ll question it. Instead, she stands here and suggests endings that might be wins if they didn’t seek larger prey than her. It’s better to make them desperate to try and force her back towards their original plan. The more they work on trapping her in a corner, the less they’ll notice how willingly she goes there.

Sure enough, Athos says, “You think I’ll let you go? So you can ride off into the sunset with your lover, and escape justice for your crimes?” His voice doesn’t quite break on the word ‘lover’, but she sees the break in his eyes, and it sends warmth through her to know that after all this time he still can’t stand the thought of her with others. She’d suspected that when he’d flinched at her talk of her natural talents, and now she knows it.

“Who are you to speak of justice to me, Athos?” Her voice is soft, now, but no less deadly for it. “After what you did?”

They stare at each other, at an impasse.

“He needs to suffer the consequences of his betrayal,” Athos says finally. “And so do you. Leave Paris if you like, it makes no difference – we will chase you down. This isn’t over until you are both dead. I might hesitate to attack a defenceless woman, but with d’Artagnan, I have no such qualms. I promise you he’ll die by my blade just as you die by the law.”

“I told you who my patron is,” she says, voice dangerous. “Do you think you can survive making an enemy of him?”

“Does he really care so much about d’Artagnan’s fate that he’d face down Treville for the boy as well as you?” he asks snidely. 

Despite how exhausted he looks by this conversation, some of the panic is gone from him now. They’re back on track, from his point of view, and from Porthos’s: they’ve got her back to the point where she needs the Cardinal’s help, where she will trust d’Artagnan, and where she believes the Musketeers must be dealt with for her own safety. From their point of view, her only option now is to take d’Artagnan to the Cardinal, to persuade him of d’Artagnan’s trustworthiness and his estrangement from the Musketeers. She’s confirmed that’s what they wanted, which achieves one of her aims. Her other reason for this visit was to indicate that she does have a weak point, one that they control, one they can use against her – d’Artagnan. How convinced of that are they? Impossible to tell, but she has at least confused them, of that she has no doubt. They’ll try to take advantage soon, she’s sure.

She has no idea what their plans were from this point, but that’s irrelevant, because they’re about go off course again immediately.

X_X_X_X_X

The Cardinal’s offices are as bare of adornment as always, but this time they contrive to look less empty: there’s half a dozen Musketeers in addition to the dozen Red Guards – he’s done well to get so many. Treville will hear about everything that happens here within the hour. D’Artagnan pauses as they enter, hesitant. She can see his mouth open, ready to ask what his former fellows are doing here. Their glares stop him, though.

The Musketeers look up to Athos. They feel similarly about Aramis and Porthos, both of whom have been with them almost since the beginning. No doubt d’Artagnan gained some approval for winning against LaBarge, but just as many Musketeers would have been offended by being passed over for a boy who didn’t even have a commission yet, and she can’t imagine an untested farm boy joining the Musketeers and immediately being allowed into the ranks of the Inseparables made anyone happy to begin with. And now, as far as they’re aware, d’Artagnan slept with Athos’s wife, cut ties with all of his friends, and shot Athos into the bargain. The Red Guards look at d’Artagnan with dislike: the Musketeers look at him with hatred. Their attitude to her seems scarcely warmer.

“What is this?” she asks the Cardinal, indicating the Musketeers around them. She knows, though. The Musketeers look eager for the order to arrest their former comrade.

Richelieu smiles thinly at her and d’Artagnan. “Musketeers slaughtering each other in the public square? Shocking. Something really must be done. You’re no longer a Musketeer, I hear, but you still must be held to account for it.”

“Nobody has been slaughtered,” Milady says quickly, one eye on the Musketeers, who look far too ready to act. “You’re misinformed. I told you earlier…” she trails off helplessly, giving up on this tack.

D’Artagnan looks at her as if for guidance, before straightening his spine and stepping forward. Two of the Musketeers are beside him before he can speak, taking his arms in iron grips, and one of the others moves forward to tie him tightly – he might have fought the Red Guards, but he doesn’t fight his fellows, allowing himself to be bound. Still, he tries to speak to Richelieu, “Athos lives, I swear he does, but all that means is that he will be looking for me. Aramis and Porthos as well -”

“I’ve heard nothing about his survival,” Richelieu says. “But it hardly matters, does it? The penalty for duelling is death. You will be hanged at dawn.”

“And will Athos be hanged as well?” Milady asks sharply. One of the other Musketeers reaches out and grabs her arm, but she shakes him off.

“That’s a question for another time, even if he has somehow survived his wounds. For now, gag and tie the boy,” he directs the Musketeers. God knows how much goodwill he’s getting from them for this day’s work – they look viciously pleased with him at present. “Throw him in the cells. He’ll face justice for what he’s done.”

“Wait!” d’Artagnan says frantically. “Listen to me. Treville has -” But he’s already muffled as one of the other Musketeers roughly shoves his scarf in his mouth, binding it tightly behind his head. The soldier’s not willing to hear whatever d’Artagnan has to say about his Captain, the one who threw d’Artagnan away and forced him to resign his commission, sure it’s going to be insulting. D’Artagnan looks at the man, furious, but then gives Milady an almost pleading look – please let her save this situation, put them back on track, make the plan work again. Fix this. She obliges.

“D’Artagnan can be useful,” she says, words tripping quickly out of her mouth. “And this situation is hardly his fault.”

“Still your tongue, or you’ll regret it,” Richelieu snaps. “Is he really worth risking my displeasure?” 

She keeps speaking anyway, of course, gaze trained on his face. “Your Eminence, he’s valuable. He knows things. And you must be aware that he isn’t to blame for what’s happened. You know what Athos did, you know why I had to persuade d’Artagnan to -”

“You had to _persuade_ him to?” Richelieu raises an eyebrow, cutting her off with sharp but understated glee. “So it’s not a duel then. It’s attempted murder, or actual murder if the task was completed. A wife scheming with her lover to rid herself of an unwanted husband? Disgusting. If you were part of the planning, you must share your new love’s fate, then, as you once vowed to share in your husband’s. Arrest her too.”

The closest Musketeer pauses at this, but she stills his qualms by saying savagely to Richelieu, “Athos deserves to die, you know he does. He’s a weak, cruel coward of a man -” She finds hard hands on her, and struggles against them fruitlessly, already too pinned to reach for her weapons. She’s reduced to hissing at Richelieu like a cat, trying to yank her way out. D’Artagnan’s gaze contains much more concern for his situation now that his sole defender has fallen from grace.

“Strip her of her weapons just as you stripped him,” Richelieu orders the Musketeers. Normally, they would try and evade his orders or check with Treville, but now he’s giving orders they like, and so they obey. “Trust me, a woman so lost to depravity as to plot the killing of her own husband will have some. And make sure you throw them in the same cell – they can comfort each other before the end. It’s the compassionate thing to do.”

Her knives clatter as they hit the floor; her gun finds a place on a nearby Musketeer’s belt. Of course, they don’t find the little vials she has sewn into her skirts – poison, ether, sleeping drops – but they’re difficult to reach, so she’s comparatively unarmed now. And then she is gagged and tied as well, all impotent fury, and she and d’Artagnan are dragged down to the cells, ready to await their execution.

If the Musketeers like to put on plays so much, she wonders how they will enjoy this one.


	2. Chapter 2

There is no reason to pretend to be a dead man, anymore, but Athos finds himself curiously unwilling to get up and go out. There’s nothing to do but wait on word from d’Artagnan, or from a message from the Cardinal agreeing to trade d’Artagnan for the fictional letter. While his wife may have found out about his survival, she’d shown no sign of distrusting d’Artagnan. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The opposite – and he finds that disquieting. Why would someone so untrustworthy trust another that easily? Is she so sure she has d’Artagnan wrapped around her little finger? So confident in her own desirability she thinks it would be that easy to persuade a man to turn against his friends and his own honour?

But she must be. After all, she convinced Remi similarly, didn’t she? The thought sickens him even more than the thought of her with d’Artagnan.

He doesn’t know what to make of her offer to leave with d’Artagnan, to disappear. It must have been a ploy of some kind, but he can’t imagine to what end. She can’t really care for him, that much is certain. But what did she have to gain from pretending she did? Perhaps he’s looking at this wrongly. If Milady de Winter’s star is no longer in ascendancy with the Cardinal, maybe she thought to leave Paris, and take with her a devoted chevalier almost unmatched in combat as a defender against anyone sent after her. Unmatched, because he’d been trained by Athos, Aramis, Porthos and Treville. A young lover, eager to please, willing to kill and die at her command – yes, he could see why that would be attractive to her, and he’s disgusted by it. It _is_ disgusting, to want someone in your life only to use them, to have no real feelings for them and yet pretend to. The way she once pretended for him.

Unfortunately, the idea she might have real feelings for d’Artagnan only disgusts him more. And what of that offer of herself, to kill or arrest if they wanted? Did she have so much trust in Musketeer honour she was willing to bet her life on it? Or if they had attempted it, would they suddenly have found a knife-wielding Valkyrie in the room and shots from a distance coming through the window? She must have had some plan. But he doesn’t have any clue what it is or what she’s doing, and there’s the rub.

Milady could have used the information she had very differently – knowing he was alive and where he was, surely it would have been easy to send someone to finish the job, or even slip in herself and cut his throat while he slept. Since he didn’t know she was aware of his survival, he wouldn’t even have been on his guard against it. Knowledge always imparts an advantage. But instead she’d freely given away a card she could have held onto and played later, and he doesn’t know if that’s because she needed to show off her own cleverness and reach, or because she simply didn’t find it a card worth playing. Or maybe that _was_ how she was choosing to play it, but then why? What did she gain from it? They could have arrested her or killed her, if they wanted.

“You all right?” Porthos asks.

He shrugs.

Porthos persists, which is unlike him – he normally lets Athos be, lets him evade or avoid any questions, any concerns. It’s peaceful. “Must’ve been rough, seeing her again. And all that stuff about d’Artagnan, and about your brother…”

“All lies,” Athos says curtly. “They’re her specialty, after all.”

“Yeah, I know.” Porthos still looks concerned, though. He has since he heard Athos’s story about his wife, d’Artagnan’s admission that Milady de Winter had to be that same wife.

He knows the story doesn’t sit easily with them, doesn’t match their idea of who Athos is – they can sympathise with his guilt over it, and condemn the death of his brother with as much anger as they would one of their own family members, but none of them like the image of him hanging his own wife. It was a flash in their eyes as he explained it, an undercurrent in their tones of surprise – for just a moment, he thinks Porthos pictured Alice, D’Artagnan Constance, and Aramis either Adele or (God forbid) the Queen. A woman they cared for and loved, a woman they couldn’t imagine killing under any circumstances. It would be wrong to say they forgive him for being capable of it, because they don’t seem to see it as something that requires forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean they’re not troubled by his actions.

Oddly, he almost wishes they were even more troubled by it, that they would be less accepting. If he could defend himself against their accusations, justify his actions at length, he might believe his own denials and feel less guilt. But they hadn’t let him utter a word of self-blame, excusing him before he could even say what they were excusing him from. And, in turn, he’d chosen to give them the bare bones of the story, the ones that made his actions more palatable, to keep them from the disgust they wanted so badly not to feel for him. He mentioned cold-blooded murder, but not tearful begging and stories of rape; he spoke of his commitment to duty but not of the rage and hurt that in some ways seemed much more central to his actions; he told tales of burning houses and dead blacksmiths without including her apparent inability to slit his throat; and he admitted to threats in dark alleyways but not to her inexplicable honesty and even more inexplicable embrace. Viewed all together, her actions seem bizarre and self-contradictory, her motives mysterious.

Some things aren’t a mystery to him, though: she tried to kill the Queen. She tried to kill Ninon. She did kill Remi, Thomas, and who knows how many others. She needs to face justice for what she’s done, for the inexcusable crimes she’s committed, the crimes he’s also culpable for thanks to his inability to watch her die and his unwillingness to share his knowledge of her with the others. He’s to blame for her continued existence, and some of her remarks make him wonder if he’s to blame for what she became as well, because surely the girl who picked flowers and ran through meadows cannot have been so complete a monster as the woman he knows now. He did this. Just like back then, it’s his duty, and responsibility for her rests on his hands – or on his sword. 

Aramis slams into the room, quickly followed by Treville. Both look harassed. Athos is on his feet in a moment, hand already reaching for his sword. “What is it?” he demands. “What’s happened?”

“D’Artagnan’s due to be hanged in the morning,” Treville says.

X_X_X_X_X

Athos paces the room again. “Can’t you just order him released?”

“I wouldn’t just be countermanding Richelieu,” Treville says. “He ran it past the King before he arrested d’Artagnan. The King who is, by all accounts, thrilled that Richelieu and I are getting along so much better. No, I can’t order him freed. And I can’t see the King until tomorrow, as he’s given orders he’s not to be disturbed by anyone.”

“D’Artagnan will be dead by tomorrow,” Aramis growls. “What about Her Majesty?”

“With the King – that’s the reason for the orders not to disturb him, I believe. Besides, we could hardly get her to overrule her husband.” Treville looks furious, at least partially with himself. “No, you’ll have to get him out tonight. And then tomorrow I’ll need to explain to His Majesty that I deliberately faked a killing, inadvertently causing him to be tricked as well, and then ordered my men to break into the Chatelet. Even if I don’t mention it was all a ploy to entrap his First Minister, it will not go well. Not to mention Richelieu will probably be present for this explanation, realise it was a trap intended for him, and no doubt take it poorly.”

“God dammit,” Athos swears. “Why didn’t d’Artagnan bring up the letter? Surely this would be the perfect thing to trade it for.”

“You wanted him to announce he was going to betray the Captain of the Musketeers in a room containing half a dozen Musketeers? Richelieu is not a fool, and no one but a fool would fall for that.”

“What about Milady?” Porthos asks suddenly. “You said she was arrested too, right?”

“Apparently she tried to persuade the Cardinal not to arrest d’Artagnan, and he didn’t take it well,” Treville says. “She’s to be executed at dawn as well, with him. They’re even sharing a cell. The supposed crime is conspiring to have you murdered, Athos.”

“Maybe it was a ploy?” Aramis suggests, unsure. “It could have been a show for the Musketeers and Red Guards, to pretend she isn’t the Cardinal’s creature. If we go to d’Artagnan’s cell, she won’t be there, surely.”

“Or Richelieu took the chance to get rid of an unsatisfactory asset. From the sound of it, she came close to revealing herself as his underling before my men, which Richelieu would never want,” Treville says. Suddenly Athos knows what he’s going to say next, and squeezes his eyes shut as if that will stop him hearing it. It doesn’t work, of course. “If she is there, you’ll have to get her out when you get d’Artagnan.”

None of them ask why. While it’s obvious this plan has completely failed, they can’t leave her to be executed. The King’s reaction to finding out Treville organised something so underhanded is likely to be bad enough – if he finds out Treville left an apparently innocent woman to die as a result of it, while rescuing his own man, it will go even worse. And plan or no plan, she’s still the only source of evidence on Richelieu they have. Maybe she can give them something.

“We can’t trust anything she has to say,” Athos says harshly. He wishes they could just leave her in that cell, and someone else would take care of his duty for him. He wishes he was certain he was strong enough to leave her to die if offered the opportunity. He wishes a lot of things, but chief among them that he never have to deal with his wife ever again. Or at least, that’s what he tells himself is chief among them. He finds his hand is grasping for the locket without him meaning to. 

“If Richelieu wants her dead, she’ll need whatever allies she can get,” Treville says. “This plan is done, and with it any chance of Richelieu shooting himself in the foot. Once he realises we were attempting to fool him, if he hasn’t already, he’ll never believe we have evidence, and he’ll never implicate himself. We need her.”

“Milady de Winter tried to kill the Queen,” Aramis points out. “If anyone else had done that -”

“She didn’t do it for her own reasons,” Treville says shortly. “She did it on his orders. If Armand still wants Her Majesty dead, he’ll find another way. We need to know why he did it and if he intends to try again, and we need leverage to keep him in line in the future. If Milady de Winter can provide any of those…”

“And what, we torture the information out of her?” Athos doesn’t even realise how furious he sounds at the very idea until Aramis gives him a worried look. He clears his throat, and modulates his tone. “She won’t help us. She doesn’t give a damn if any of us live or die. She certainly won’t anger the Cardinal further on our behalf.”

“Milady does care if _one_ of us lives or dies,” Porthos says, slightly awkward. When they look at him, he shrugs. “Probably, anyway.”

It takes Athos a moment. “You think d’Artagnan could persuade her to help us?” he asks incredulously as the penny drops. “There’s no one she cares about more than herself, certainly not him.”

“She risked her life to come bargain with you for his, and is possibly about to lose it from trying to protect him from Richelieu,” Aramis says bluntly. “Maybe she doesn’t care about him more than herself, but clearly she still cares. Who knows if it’ll last through figuring out he fooled her, but it might.”

“Even beside that, Milady might help if we can promise her what she wants,” Porthos says. “Money and help getting out of France in return for everything she knows should do it. The thing is, least we _know_ what she’s after right now. That means we can deal with her.”

“Trust me, we can’t,” Athos says darkly. His wife is an expert at avoiding death by hanging, after all, and just as expert at extricating money from people without giving them anything in return. She’ll use them, but they won’t use her, not successfully.

Treville meets his eyes. He looks exhausted. “I’m sorry to make you do this, Athos, I am. I understand your issues here. But Richelieu turning on her is the only positive to come out of this fiasco – we need to take advantage.”

X_X_X_X_X

Aramis and Porthos are dragging the guard’s unconscious bodies away, and Athos is making his way into the right corridor when he suddenly stops stock still at the sound of his wife’s voice. Hearing her is not as bad as seeing her, but it’s still a shock, every time. The flood of memories never slows.

“Are you still obsessed with this subject?” She sounds bored, annoyed, and impatient as she speaks to d’Artagnan. There’s nothing in the way she speaks that calls to mind the way she spoke to him back when she pretended adoration. But perhaps there is a slight softness laying underneath it, a hint of almost-amusement, and he wonders if that’s what genuine affection sounds like from her. After all, it’s not like he would know.

“It doesn’t bother you? It should. Why would he _do_ this? Not just to me, but to you?”

Since d’Artagnan is clearly trying to get information, and will probably have better luck getting an answer from Anne without her husband standing there glaring, Athos remains still and listens to them talk.

“Oh, the Cardinal’s been in the process of turning on me for some time,” she says, almost dismissively. “The last straw was Athos taking me hostage. It convinced him you were all too unpredictable to let live. So he gave me a choice – you all died, or I did.”

A pause. Then, “ _That’s_ why you asked me to kill Athos?”

He sounds more annoyed at her for not sharing this previously than understanding of her motives, but he’s clearly struggling to keep it out of his voice: sticking with the plan even when it’s obviously failed, just in case. Avoiding giving her even the slightest bit of information she doesn’t have. He’s gotten better at this since the first time they sent him undercover, Athos thinks, but he can’t be proud of his protégé when he’s so focused on listening to his wife’s reply.

“You know, Athos implied that my only interest in you was as one of his friends, that I seduced you for that reason. But if that _was_ the case, I’ve had years – I could have seduced Aramis or Porthos long before you came along. That truth holds here as well. I’ve had years to kill them, and to kill him. I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to.”

If d’Artagnan sounds annoyed, she just sounds indifferent. It reminds him of how she used to reply sometimes when Thomas suggested a game of cards and she preferred to do something else: _thank you but no, I’m not in the mood for it today, perhaps tomorrow_. As if the lives of he and his friends are that inconsequential. And _I could have seduced Aramis or Porthos_? He hadn’t thought about it before, but yes, she probably could have. Porthos and Aramis have never been known to turn down a willing, beautiful woman, and it’s not like he knew to put them on their guard for her. The thought nauseates him all over again, though. Of course it’s crossed her mind. It’s exactly the sort of cruelty she’d consider. Maybe that wasn’t why she began this affair with d’Artagnan, maybe it couldn’t have been, given the timing, but he wonders if it’s why she continued it. 

“But then Athos attacking me made Richelieu force the matter, and since he’s my patron, I could hardly say no,” she continues, as Athos struggles to swallow the bile in his throat. “It was me or them... and now I suppose it’s me. I did think he’d give me more time, though.” 

“You planned to kill the others as well?”

“Is that self-righteousness I hear? You were worried about them coming after you, weren’t you? If anything I think you should be flattered I went to such lengths to try and get you off the list of Musketeers I was expected to kill.”

“Because the position I’m in right now is much better?”

“Well.” He peers around the corner and even in the dark can see the white of her teeth as she smiles, a crooked smile but seemingly a real one. “If you remember, I did try to get you out of that as well. This just doesn’t seem to be my week. And I expect tomorrow will be worse still.” A casual way to talk about her own death, but then, she’s died before – perhaps familiarity breeds contempt.

D’Artagnan sounds thoroughly exasperated by her now. “Why did you try to get me out of this? Why go to such lengths, why risk yourself? What’s in it for you?”

“Do you remember what I told you, the first time I met you?” She says it softly, and she moves closer to d’Artagnan in the darkness, and white hot rage and jealousy tears through Athos. Her next words only make it worse. “‘The man I loved tried to murder me’. I had no reason to lie. I did love him. And you remind me of him, you know, in some ways. But you’re not like him. You didn’t betray me. You chose to believe me, as he couldn’t. You saved my life. Why is it so amazing that I might come to care for you?”

“You framed me for murder. And, if I recall correctly, you recently told me you could blow out my brains and never think of me again.”

“That may have been a slight exaggeration.” His wife moves even closer to d’Artagnan, so that the two dark figures merge to one, and then they’re kissing, and Athos is even more frozen in place by his fury and unreasoning agony. He feels a sharp pain in his hands and realises his fists are clenched so tightly his nails draw blood. This is nightmarish.

D’Artagnan pulls away after only a second, showing more self-control than Athos has ever managed. “This is hardly the time.”

“Because we have so much more time?”

“We’re in a cell, waiting to die. The prospect of being hanged tends to ruin the mood.”

“Not in my experience, and believe me, few people have more experience with that particular prospect than me,” she says dryly.

Athos controls himself, taking a deep breath. He’s waited here a long time – if he waits much longer, the others will catch up and ask what he’s doing, why he’s lurking in the shadows instead of acting. A reasonable question. The answer – to torture himself, apparently – is unlikely to be acceptable to them.

She stiffens as he comes into view. “D’Artagnan…” she hisses, alerting her companion, then steps forward to curl her fingers around the bars of the cell. “Hello, Athos. Here to gloat?”

“That’s more your style than mine.”

“To pre-empt the executioner, then? I thought you said the law would kill me,” she comments. Her smirk is out of place in a situation where surely she should be the one at a disadvantage. “I must admit, I didn’t expect you to be proved right so quickly, or so ironically. Did you find the thought of another man ordering my release from this world drove you to jealousy? Are you here to give me a little death before he can? Or attempt to, at least.”

“I’m here to rescue you,” he all but spits the words out, hating the taste of them.

“Aren’t you supposed to want the both of us dead?”

“I do,” he says, shooting a quick glance to d’Artagnan to play along with this. If she does have any fondness for his young friend, better for her to keep it as long as possible, because the others are so convinced they can continue to use that affection to their advantage. It’s only his sour jealousy that makes him want to grind her fondness to nothing with the harsh truth that she’s been played. He comforts himself with the thought of telling her later, humiliating her with the knowledge that she’d been fooled in the exact way she’d once fooled him. “Treville doesn’t. I’ll do my duty regardless of how misguided I think his orders may be.”

“I’m not a Musketeer anymore, why does Treville care?” d’Artagnan asks, then huffs out a breath as if in realisation. “Ah, the Cardinal. Well, then, let us out already. I’ve been sick of this place for hours.”

Athos nods grimly and steps forward with the keys he took from the jailer, starting to work on the lock.

Milady turns her head and surveys d’Artagnan thoughtfully. “He could stab us the second the door’s open, you know.”

“You said yourself that duty and honour is everything to him,” d’Artagnan points out. “He’ll obey Treville’s commands. And it’s not like we have a better option.”

She turns her green gaze back on Athos, consideration in it. Is she planning to stab him and flee, assuming that d’Artagnan will go with her? If she is, that plan must suffer a setback when Porthos joins them, breathing heavily. “The guards are all hidden,” he says shortly. “Aramis will be back any second. Are we tying them?”

D’Artagnan gives him a thin smile. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

He’s a better actor than Athos by far, but he’ll never match the skill Anne de Breuil once showed when she whispered to her husband that she loved him and would always love him.

To his surprise, when he looks at her, Anne’s staring at his chest. He realizes a moment later that she’s studying the bulkiness of the bandages below his shirt, and tenses, wondering if she’s about to realise her young Lancelot is no such thing. It’s not unbelievable he’s up and about – after all, d’Artagnan’s real wound is only a day and a half older, and he’s hardly been slowed by it – but it is convenient.

“Now we all have scars from this,” she says with faint satisfaction, instead. “Though I suppose both of yours can be covered by shirts, which is hardly fair.”

His stomach clenches at that, partially from guilt, but also partially from her talking like d’Artagnan is an integral part of their story, instead of a recent addition to it. The history he has with her is weighted by six years of love, hatred, longing, desire, anger, grief, guilt, and pure agony, a swirling maelstrom of furious emotion. The thought that she could feel anything half as strong for d’Artagnan is infuriating. But then, perhaps her emotions for him aren’t so complex, perhaps she’s always and ever driven only by vengeful rage towards him, and everything else has simply been another mind game. He has no way of knowing.

The door is wide open now, and they all wait as if for someone to give the call to arms, staring at each other suspiciously. Milady is the first to make a move, sighing like this is all so fatiguing, and Athos levels his gun at her as she sweeps out the door and moves to stand in front of him, ready for her to flee or attack.

“We’d best get a move on,” she says practically, casting an unreadable glance at Athos through her lashes. “Besides anything else, I need to get some rest. Being taking prisoner once in a day is exhausting enough, but twice?”

X_X_X_X_X

She’s not allowed sleep, of course, or at least not until after a discussion. They’re back at the hideout Athos used when pretending to be dead. It’s strange to think that while there’s doubt, most people still believe him to be dead, with the exception of the people they most wanted to fool. He wonders what the other Musketeers will make of this when they find out the whole. He wonders what the King’s response will be.

“The Cardinal has turned against you,” Treville says to Milady, quite reasonably. “We’re your best option at surviving.”

“Are you? Are you really?” Her gaze pins Athos to the wall, before returning to Treville. “One of you wants me dead, two were quite willing to watch that happen, and Captain, you yourself didn’t seem terribly concerned for mine or d’Artagnan’s safety when you were telling him to resign his commission.”

“The enemy of your enemy is your friend,” Aramis suggests.

“By that logic, Richelieu is my friend as well. I’m positively inundated with them, in fact.” 

“Show sense,” Treville commands. “With the number of people who want you dead, you can’t afford to refuse the only offer open to you. France needs the information you have.”

“Then France must become accustomed to disappointment,” she says dryly. “If I vanish now, the Cardinal might not bother to chase me. Out of sight, out of mind, after all. But if I show myself willing to be his enemy – if I start giving away state secrets like courtesan bestowing kisses – he’ll need to hunt me down and see me silenced. Do you really expect me to risk myself on your behalf?”

“Is there any less risk in staying here?” d’Artagnan asks her. Aramis had managed to hiss some vague instructions to him on their way out, and he’s playing her loyal but slightly self-interested cavalier to the best of his ability – a man who wants nothing more than a chance at survival, the possibility of profit, and the favours of a beautiful woman. Selfishness is a mask that sits poorly on his thin face, but he’s trying. “If they’re willing to offer us a chance, I say we take it, and give them what they want.”

“Easy advice to offer when you’re not the one giving it,” she notes. “You’re all but irrelevant to Richelieu. I won’t be.”

“Do you really think us less dangerous than Richelieu?” Athos asks, glowering at her. He finds that he’s moved forward without meaning to, and leans on the desk to glare at her from only inches away.

She doesn’t flinch. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. You’ve had nearly as many chances to kill me as I have to kill you, and despite all the sound and fury, you have yet to act on one.”

Purely because they need her – but she doesn’t realise that, apparently. He wonders if whatever deal Treville makes with her will constrain him from killing her, from finally correcting his failure and getting justice for all the lives she’s taken, and wonders why he feels almost light at the thought of that choice being taken from him. It shouldn’t even be a choice, but when he looks at her, he’s always struck by the impossibility of her fierce heartbeat stopping, those bright eyes dulling, red lips turning bloodless, hot breath ceasing, as if it’s like imagining the sun cooling or the winds forever dying down. She has so much force, so much presence that it’s difficult to imagine how it’s kept within her body, or how it could be removed from this world with the thrust of a sword through her heart.

“You haven’t killed me either. Does that make you less dangerous?” Despite his anger at her, he finds himself almost curious. Why _hasn’t_ she killed him? Why deputise the act to d’Artagnan? When the other man said that was the act required to prove d’Artagnan’s loyalty to her, he’d been surprised, because it wasn’t like she lacked the ability to take care of it herself, especially if she struck when he was incapacitated by drink. From the sound of it, she’d planned to dispatch Aramis and Porthos personally, unless she has allies he’s unaware of. And the last time she held a blade to his throat, he certainly offered no resistance.

“No, more, because it proves I have patience,” she replies, leaning in as well, twisting her lips into a savage smile. The inches between them narrow to one, and she’s everything he sees – pale cheeks flushed with unnameable emotions, green eyes burning like the fires of Hell, teeth bared as if she would like to tear a chunk from him (as if he has any left to spare). 

The chain of the locket burns against his neck and chest like it’s branding him, and he pushes himself back from her before he can ask her to remind him why he wears it once more. The others are looking at him in concern, and he knows he has a hectic flush across his cheeks, knows it should only be rage, knows it’s not. “Then perhaps it’s proof of the same for me,” he bites off. He’s had five years to learn patience, after all, five years waiting fruitlessly for his grief, loss, self-hatred and love to fade. The boy who loved her had no patience, though, he remembers – not even enough to wait for that first flush of absolute heartbreak and betrayal to pass before sending her to her death.

“Athos, enough,” Treville says. 

“I won’t be irrelevant to Richelieu if I leave with you,” d’Artagnan points out to Milady, trying to return them to the matter at hand. “Whatever fate you think he has planned for you, I’ll share it. It’s not like I can stay in Paris after what’s happened, there’s no future for me here now. But I have no intention of either of us dying, and if we can get enough livres from this, we can buy a nice life elsewhere.”

“And what of the draper’s wife?” Milady asks almost casually.

D’Artagnan sucks in a quick breath, then says harshly, “Even more irrelevant than you believe me to be. She’s thrown her lot in with her husband, as I’ve thrown mine in with you. I’m not repining.”

“Hmm.” Milady studies him, then returns her attention to Treville. “Well, then. You’d best tell me what the starting point for our negotiations is. Athos would be the first to tell you that nothing from me comes cheap.”

X_X_X_X_X

Athos sits on the house’s little set of stairs, a bottle of wine in his hand and a thousand confused thoughts in his head. He wonders how smug his wife is feeling right now, sitting in that room with Treville, hammering out the details of an agreement that will see her safe from him, out of Paris, and rich enough to start again. It’s not an absolute triumph for her – the Cardinal will be after her, and once she’s given them whatever information she has, she’ll realise fast enough that d’Artagnan has no intention of going anywhere with her. But it still leaves her free to kill and kill again, every murder landing on his head as well, free to find new cities and new lovers to her heart’s desire, and the idea of her murders should be the most insupportable one but damn him, of course it’s not.

“Athos?” d’Artagnan says in an undertone, joining him. “How are you doing?”

“Shouldn’t you be in there?” he asks instead of answering, and he knows it comes out with an edge of bitterness. He stops himself from saying more by taking a deep drink, and finds that the bottle is empty. No matter, he has more.

“She isn’t that interested in my input,” d’Artagnan says.

“Really? She seems quite devoted.”

“She shows more smugness than affection,” d’Artagnan says, with great accuracy and no small amount of judgment. “I think she likes the thought she stole me from you more than she likes me, although I’m not sure she’s aware of that. Maybe she just never experiences real emotion, only counterfeit ones, and so any feeling is enough for her to label it love, however shallow and spiteful the feeling is. Whatever deal she makes with Treville will be for her benefit alone, I’m sure of that, and I’ll just be a prize to prove her victory.”

Athos sighs, letting some of the tension leave his body. She is capable of real emotion, he knows that she is – no one can carry that much rage without it being genuine. He feels the oddest urge to defend her from d’Artagnan’s harsh judgment, although he doesn’t know how he’d even begin to. D’Artagnan is probably right, Milady probably sees him as a prize more than a partner, but there’s no denying she’s risked a fair amount for this specific reward. It puts the others at their ease, knowing her motives – money, safety, d’Artagnan – but it just angers Athos. He thinks somewhere deep down he wanted to believe he was her chief motive, that revenge on him was more important to her than any other lure, that he was the centre of her world the way she will always be the centre of his. Instead, it’s all shallow – she might be glad of the chance to pay back the score with him if it’s offered, but apparently she’s also happy enough at the idea of simply leaving, provided she can assure her own comfort in the process. It’s not what he expected, after her talk of burning the past down.

Treville comes out as well. “We’re continuing tomorrow. We’ve reached an agreement – apparently she has no proof of Richelieu’s actions, but knows where we can get some.”

“She might disappear in the night, if we’re not careful,” Athos warns. “No matter how much money you’ve offered, I doubt she likes that she was backed into a corner.”

“I know. We’ll watch her in shifts,” Treville says quietly. “I’ve also said that we won’t allow d’Artagnan to stay in the same room with her, for fear of plotting.” D’Artagnan looks relieved by this, and Athos is even more so – of the many things in his life he never wants to hear, the noises of his wife sharing her bed and probably her body with his closest friend has to be near the top.

Of course, thinking that pulls images into his mind – half memory, half nightmare, her wound about d’Artagnan in the same way she once entangled her body with his, the same dance with a different partner. The skin that they’ve both seen, touched, kissed, tasted, his experiences five years old but d’Artagnan’s far more recent. He shouldn’t view it as sleeping with his wife – the wife he loved was a fiction, and the woman d’Artagnan bedded was nothing more than a monster wearing her face. But it’s hard to think of it without that surge of fury, jealousy, and possessiveness. His mind is aware of what she is, but his heart never has been able to make the distinction.

“I’ll take first shift,” he says, without meaning to. But it’s a good idea – get it over with early. He won’t relax at all if he knows at some point during the night one of the others will come to retrieve him and send him to stare at his sleeping wife. Of course, he won’t relax regardless, but at least once he’s done with his shift he can drink himself into a stupor.

“What? Athos, I didn’t plan for you to watch her at all,” Treville says, frustrated with him. “You’re too close to this.”

Treville’s right, but it would dent his denial to admit it. Unreasonably, the comment makes him want to take a shift watching her, if only to prove he has no issues. “My knowledge of her is an advantage, not a weakness. I’m not so close to this that I’ll fail to stop her if she tries to run.”

He meets Treville’s gaze squarely, and after a long moment, the other man gives in with a sharp nod.

Aramis and Anne both look up as he enters the room, stopping what appeared to be a staring competition she would probably have won. Aramis looks doubtful as Athos tells him shortly that he’s to watch her for now, but her eyes light up with unholy amusement at the idea.

“Get in,” he orders, nodding to the bed, as Aramis leaves.

“Ordering me to bed, husband?” She takes a few steps towards him, giving him a sultry smirk. “How… _sentimental_ of you.”

He hates her, every bit of her: the mocking gleam to her eyes, the twist to those cruel lips, the sharp jut of fine bones under pale skin, the dark tumble of silky hair, the smooth, delicious curves of her above the low corset. There isn’t an inch of her he hasn’t touched, tasted, learnt, memorised, loved, and now he despises her with that same thoroughness.

“Don’t come any closer.”

“Afraid of what you’ll do?”

“Concerned about what you might. You could have any number of knives concealed in those skirts,” he says, although he knows she’s been thoroughly checked for weapons by both the guards and Porthos. It never pays to underestimate her.

She laughs, a sharp, bright little noise. “Are you saying I need to strip if I wish to approach you, Athos?” Her hands go teasingly to her belt, the empty sheathe at it still testament to how dangerous she is, and she plays with it as if she really plans to follow through with her taunt.

He meets her eyes with his own unamused gaze, although he can’t prevent the painful jump of his pulse at her words, the sudden raggedness to his breathing, the images that flood his mind. “I’m saying that if you continue baiting me, you’ll regret it.”

After nearly a minute of staring at each other in silence – a minute that makes Athos’s heartbeat quicken in his chest, that causes his body tighten in hatred, fear, and helpless need – she gives a little shrug as if bored with her taunting and moves back towards the bed, away from him. Relief mingles with disappointment, but neither dulls want, because Athos is still watching his heartbreakingly lovely wife carry out her evening toilette, and even if she’s decided to wear all her layers to bed the memories it provokes make him light-headed.

“Are you here to prevent me fleeing?” she asks idly. She still doesn’t lie down on the bed, despite her claim to Treville of being too tired to continue, just stands beside it looking at him. “Or just from crawling into bed with d’Artagnan? And which would bother you more, I wonder?”

“Nothing can match the happiness I would feel at finally seeing the back of you,” he bites out, wishing that was true. His memories of her more than match any happiness he could feel now – the joy he once experienced with her surpasses everything since in its intensity, and will surpass everything until his death, he’s sure.

“I look forward to finally being done with the Musketeers as well,” she remarks lightly, but then something darkens in her eyes. “Well, with one exception, I suppose. I’d forgotten how uncomfortable it is to be around someone you have such strong emotions for, and still be at a distance from them. To care so much, and yet…”

“You’re incapable of caring for anybody.” He bites out the words, wanting only to cut off her goading. “All that’s inside you is spite and selfishness. Whatever you feel for d’Artagnan, it’s as empty as you are. There’s nothing you can say that would convince me otherwise, however hard you try.”

“What, do you want me to wax eloquently about my feelings for him?” Sharp white teeth dig into her bottom lip, hard enough to turn it pale as well, and he thinks he’s finally managed to anger her – well, with his words, anyway. She has anger enough at his actions. “As if you’d ever believe anything I had to say.”

“Your only honesty is in cruelty.”

“Oh, it’s cruelty you want? I could tell you _all_ about our encounters, if you like, since you seem so curious. Would that bother you, Athos?” Her eyes glitter with malice, and she moves closer to him as if drawn. “Would that be cruel enough?”

He remains silent, not wanting to encourage her, but it seems his silence is encouragement enough. 

“The first time we met he insulted another one of my lovers, you know. Quite rudely. He reminded me of you then, all reckless youth and unthinking chivalry,” she says, speaking every word slowly and distinctly, as if enjoying the taste of them. She prowls towards him as she talks, despite his earlier threat, a predator scenting weakness. “So I caught up with him later – after taking care of my original swain, of course – took his gun off him, and promised to teach him some manners.”

“Stop,” he warns her, but she doesn’t heed it. He closes his eyes against the sight of her as she reaches him. Unfortunately, that just makes him picture the story she’s telling, picture the place he knows it ends, the scene he doesn’t want to imagine. The place it starts is hardly better, the unknown lover he knows she murdered, a man presumably just as weak before her charms as him or d’Artagnan. Well, maybe not as weak as him – who could be?

“He kissed me, of course. I suppose he wanted a different sort of lesson.” She’s close enough now that they may as well be kissing too, her body pressed against his, and he breathes heavily and fights to control himself, fights to block out the feel of her, the scent of jasmine attacking him, the rush of hatred making him dizzy. “And then I said…” she presses her lips almost to his ear, so he can feel the heat of her breath on it, and says quietly, voice low and dirty, “Oh, do what you want.”

The leash he was barely keeping on his temper snaps sharply, and he slams her hard against the wall, knocking the breath out of her. He shoves at her, as if there’s the slightest chance he could hurt her as much with his strength as she can hurt him with her words, digging his fingers in like he wants to leave an impression of them carved into her skin. He looms over her, fuming, barely resisting the urge to bring his hands to her neck, to draw his sword against her, to press himself harder into her, to hit her, to kiss her, to kill her. “ _Stop_.”

She starts laughing breathlessly against him, uncaring of the danger, and he pulls her forward an inch so he can slam her back to the wall again to try and make her stop that too. She doesn’t even wince.

“My God, Athos, one would think you find adultery more offensive than murder,” she says mockingly, finally catching her breath, laughter dying down. “But then, lying is worse than both, isn’t it? If it’s lying to you, anyway.”

“Don’t.” Now it sounds less of an order, more of a plea.

“Tell me, was I hung for what I did to Thomas, or what I did to you?”

He lets go of her, and stumbles back several steps in his rush to move away from her, feeling it like a blow. It’s nothing he hasn’t wondered himself, in the darkest part of the night, however much he fights against it. When he thinks of her crimes, the one that weighs heaviest on his heart is always her lies to him, her attempt to use his love for her for her own gain, the utter betrayal of it all. He can remember the question he asked before he condemned her, more important to him than any about Thomas’s death – _did you ever love me?_ – and the answer he could no longer believe. His grief for the woman she pretended to be far outstripped his grief for his brother, and the heartbroken rage that drove him to order a hanging felt like it contained very little of duty about it.

But as always, he quashes those memories, fights them with the image of his brother dead on the floor, the crime that surely, _surely_ was the reason for all of this. It’s not that she lied and cheated and tricked, it’s that the evidence of those lies led to his brother’s death, it’s that her treatment of Athos proved beyond doubt that she was cruel and cold-blooded enough to kill Thomas without a qualm. It has to be that. It has to be about his duty to his family and the law, because if he killed her for his own broken heart, then he’s nothing but a murderer, and the only woman he’ll ever love was his victim, however much she may have deserved to die.

She’s still watching him, but the smile on her face has slowly faded, the cruel light leaving her eyes. She lets out a long, almost-soundless sigh, and makes her way over to the bed. She moves like her muscles ache, she throws no malicious invitations or innuendos at him, and she doesn’t renew her efforts on the weak point she just stabbed, so he thinks perhaps she really is as tired as she claimed to be.

He slumps against the wall and watches her sleeping figure until his eyes ache, and then he watches some more, so by the time Porthos comes to take over from him, it makes sense that his eyes are glassy and red.


	3. Chapter 3

She’s experienced it before, but it’s never stopped amusing her: there is no easier mark than a man who believes he’s successfully fooling you. It was an education that began in her thieving days, by necessity – dishonourable men who persuaded her to their houses with seduction in mind rarely realised they were in the process of being robbed until it had already happened. Now it’s her bread and butter. Women in this game are always underestimated, and more than one player of it has walked away from the table thinking she’s not as clever as she believes, when in fact she got far more than she gave and what she gave was fool’s gold – much like with Treville last night, in fact. Pretending to be stupider, sweeter, more gullible, or more emotional than she could ever be is practically second nature to her now.

Here, though, all she has to pretend to be is a version of herself with slightly fewer options. 

“What time will Treville be back?” she asks sharply. “If you’re to get this proof, you’ll need to hurry.”

“Why’re there time constraints suddenly?” Porthos questions her. 

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but your Captain is currently telling the King – and therefore Richelieu – about our little jailbreak,” she drawls. “Once he realizes that I am not dead, that I am in fact in your company, he’d be a fool if he didn’t destroy or at least move anything I know about. You’ll need to break in before that happens.”

Athos is staring at her from the doorway. He hasn’t uttered a word since Treville left, and it’s been longer still since he addressed her directly. As always, his gaze on her is more distracting than it should be. It’s strange, to have him so near, to stare into eyes that once held nothing but love for her and now see nothing but hate and pain. But he still wears her locket, she can see the outline of it, and she wonders exactly what it means to him.

“I’m still not too clear on what this magical proof is,” Aramis says. “The Captain didn’t go into detail. Some sort of ledger? How will that prove the Cardinal’s behind the attempt on Her Majesty’s life?”

“Richelieu’s private accounts,” she corrects. “He keeps track of every sou he spends, you know. My name appears on there more than a few times. And do you know what one of his recent expenditures will be? He’ll have reversed it out later in the accounts, of course, but Richelieu is above all things neat, and Gallagher and his men were not cheap.”

“He won’t have listed it as anything incriminating, surely,” D’Artagnan objects.

“Of course not, but it hardly matters. There were promissory notes found on the assassins, and the amount perfectly matches a cryptically titled outlay on the Cardinal’s records only a few days before. An outlay then reversed when the assassins failed. Tell me that’s not incriminating enough.” 

“Won’t he have crossed it out, made it utterly unreadable? The money never went through,” Porthos points out. “There’s no reason not to tear out the page, even.”

“Why?” she asks reasonably. “His private accounts are never meant to be seen by anyone else, otherwise he’d hardly risk having my name in them. There are dozens of other questionable entries, for that matter. I realise that specific assassination is the one you want to prove, but if all you’re looking for is leverage, it will give you plenty even without that.”

“But you still think it _will_ prove he went after Her Majesty,” d’Artagnan says, still suspicious. He’s already all but forgotten he’s supposed to be at odds with the rest of them, she notices with concealed amusement.

“As I said, he notes down all expenditure when it occurs, and the note was for a great deal of money.” She shrugs. “At the very least, there’ll be a carefully blacked-out section a few days before the attack. That’s suspicious enough to give the King pause, especially once he begins looking back on their conversations at the time.”

“What conversations?” Aramis asks, slightly too quickly, concern writ large on his face.

She notices it and notes it, as she notes most things. “Oh, the King complaining about his uninterested, uninteresting, potentially barren wife.” Aramis grits his teeth at that. “How beautiful, fascinating, and presumably fertile Charlotte Mellendorf is. How France needs a Dauphin more than it needs its current Queen. His Majesty has a very selective memory, but when prompted, I imagine he’ll recall saying a few things that could have given Richelieu the idea he wanted his wife gone.”

“The King gave the order for Her Majesty to die?” Aramis says, incredulous, fury visibly rising. “I don’t believe it.”

“Oh, it was never an order,” she shrugs. “Just a… wish. And the Cardinal’s been granting His Majesty’s wishes since long before he ruled the country.” She looks around at their faces. “What, did you think he simply woke up one morning and decided to kill the Queen on some petty whim? The Cardinal is many things, but first and foremost, he’s a patriot. Everything he does is for the good of France.”

“You can’t really believe that all of the crimes you’ve committed were for the good of France,” Athos says slowly, speaking to her for the first time since last night.

“You can’t really believe I care,” she says with deliberate indifference, knowing it will infuriate him. “France is a concept, and concepts are cheap. What I offer is not. Richelieu might work for the good of France, but I worked for Richelieu, and I wasn’t paid in ideals or dreams. Money, power and security are much more useful.”

D’Artagnan’s lips twist into a disdainful scowl. He looks on the edge of saying something very rude, but when she glances at him and raises an eyebrow, he subsides. Perhaps he’s remembered that he would never make such a face at the sweet Constance Bonacieux he so obviously loves, and therefore should not be making it at her either.

By now, Monsieur Bonacieux will have received a message from his wife, delivered by a helpful urchin of Sarazin’s – she’s staying with family, she needs time to think, as all the recent drama with d’Artagnan has left her confused and in need of space. Constance Bonacieux appears to be related to half of Paris in one way or another, so it should take him a while to exhaust all the options. With them all holed up in this unknown house, there’s no chance of him tracking down d’Artagnan and the others in his search for his errant wife, at least. She’s still alive – uncomfortable, furious, bound, and probably very sick of Sarazin and his girl’s company, but alive. And will remain alive, until the game is done, one way or the other. There are few people all the Inseparables really care about, and fewer still who are as relatively unprotected as Madame Bonacieux. 

Treville enters. He looks exhausted and annoyed. “Getting to any evidence has just become more difficult,” he says shortly, not bothering with any kind of greeting. “Musketeers are banned from the Louvre, at present. His Majesty is quite displeased we made him look foolish, as he sees it.”

“Did you tell him why you broke them out?”

“I claimed the falling out between them never really happened – we were looking into a suspicious group of smugglers, and d’Artagnan supposedly killing one of my best Musketeers was to gain their trust,” he says. “I said it was like the time with Vadim, and apologised thoroughly for not informing the First Minister or His Majesty about the plan beforehand. Still, he’s not happy.”

They’re all watching Milady carefully, she realizes – no doubt waiting for it to occur to her that Treville would hardly have been part of Athos faking his own death purely to let him surprise her and d’Artagnan later on, and that his excuse to the King strongly indicates he was in on it from the beginning. The alternative scenario they’ve put forward for her benefit – a genuine rift between Athos and d’Artagnan, and Treville intervening only when it became apparent that there was a useful source of information trapped in the Chatelet awaiting execution – is just about believable, but his lie to the King is closer to the actual truth than that scenario. It would make most people start to wonder. But then, their real scheme was quite involved, and uncharacteristically underhanded for a straightforward man like Treville (and for her husband, but she doesn’t like to think of that). Milady tries to look suitably arrogant and sure of herself, so convinced of their inability to fool her that she unquestionably accepts they’re being truthful.

“Well, I suppose it’s better than admitting your Musketeers sometimes threaten to kill unarmed women, and that not everyone approves of that the way you seem to, Captain,” Milady says sharply. Treville’s cover story is not an exceptional one, not by Milady’s standards, but it was probably sufficient for His Majesty. She’s been privy to enough of his discussions with Richelieu that her opinion of his intellect is not high. “And what about the Cardinal?”

“Even less happy, well aware that none of this had anything to do with smugglers, and furious that I’m blatantly attempting to gain information about him from you.” Treville sits down heavily. “He seems more angry at the blatancy than the attempt, almost. He’s the one who persuaded His Majesty that Musketeers should not have access to the Louvre for the moment considering our recent law-breaking.”

“I told you,” Milady says with quiet smugness. “He’ll be moving or destroying anything incriminating I might know about, and he doesn’t want any of you in the Louvre until then just in case.”

“Yes,” acknowledges Treville. “I agree he’s trying to make it harder for me to pursue any allegations against him. But we have a meeting with the King to discuss it further this afternoon, and that will provide the opportunity you all need. Richelieu will be well away from his chambers then. God willing he won’t have been able to get rid of everything so quickly.”

“So we need to break into the Louvre,” Aramis says.

“And from there, into the Cardinal’s chambers, and once in his chambers, his secret cabinet, and in the secret cabinet there is a specific locked box you’ll need to open,” Milady says with obnoxious satisfaction. “My, you will have an enjoyable day.”

“You won’t get a single sou if they fail, so I suggest you take that smile off your face,” Treville says bluntly.

She lets it fade, and gives him a level stare. “Well, then. It could be I know a few secret ways into Richelieu’s chambers.”

“As well as knowing where his secret cabinet is, and the box, and how to get inside it,” Treville says. “Which is why you’re going as well. I imagine the Red Guards are accustomed to seeing you around the place.”

“They probably have orders to arrest me on sight, or even kill me,” she protests. “This wasn’t part of our deal.”

“Our deal was for evidence. I expect you to provide it.”

“With this group?” She waves her hands at the crowded room, illustrating how many of them there are. “You should only be sending one person, two at most, if you want to avoid detection. I suppose d’Artagnan and I could go -” It couldn’t be more obvious she plans not to return in that case, and Athos interrupts her before she can go on.

“We can’t trust her,” Athos says harshly to Treville. “She’s a liar, a thief, and a murderer.”

“I’m well aware,” Treville says. “But we need that information, and no one else knows where it is. We need to do this as quickly as possible. If Musketeers are caught searching the Cardinal’s chambers…”

Milady doesn’t speak up, knowing that anything she says is likely to increase suspicion instead of ease it. She’s right, and so is Treville – they can’t afford not to send her, and they can’t afford to all go with her, so it will have to be her and one other. It makes sense to hold d’Artagnan back – she might be reasonably expected to begin doubting his allegiance to her if they’re so willing to trust him, and remaining here he could theoretically function as a kind of hostage for her good behaviour. All three of the others will no doubt volunteer, but she knows her husband.

She watches them argue with each other, until Treville finally overrules the others. For a Captain, he gives his men a _lot_ of leeway. The Cardinal wouldn’t have allowed her to utter half this many excuses and opinions, and he’s still unusually reasonable – most men at such a high level wouldn’t be willing to listen to any backchat from their inferiors.

“I’ll go with her,” Porthos offers. The look he gives Milady is hard.

“No. I’ll go with her.”

Treville frowns. “Athos…”

“I’m most likely to realize it if she plans to betray us,” Athos says, iron in his voice. “And I’m still supposed to be too wounded to move. No one will be looking out for me the way they might the rest of the Musketeers. I’ll cover my face, but it’s best if everyone else has alibis, just in case I need to knock out a Red Guard or two.”

Her husband, so entirely predictable, and yet so sure that she’s the predictable one. Well, he’s predictable in some ways, at least – she hadn’t foreseen him faking his death. She shouldn’t assume he doesn’t have his own plan now. He might intend to kill her in this mission, or leave her to take the blame for the theft – but no, he’d clear that with Treville at least, and even if Treville agreed to such a betrayal he wouldn’t plan for Athos to be the one to carry it out.

If they’ve realised she’s lying to them – well. She considers what they could be planning, and finds none of the possibilities fit. Just like always, if their end is her death or arrest, they could achieve that easily without a farce. If they’re after the Cardinal, they might be playing along with her, hoping he will somehow incriminate himself in the course of this scheme – but he’s on his guard for that now, she has no intention of accidentally providing them with what they need, and it’s difficult to think how breaking into the Louvre could help them there. No, she doesn’t think they’ve realized she’s playing them, at least not yet.

“I should come with you,” d’Artagnan says in concern to Athos, but immediately remembers he’s supposed to be on her side and tries to make it look like the suggestion was directed to her. Good God, his attention span is miniscule sometimes. He reminds her less of Athos by the hour – but then, she’s never actually spent much time with him, or at least not much time talking, so perhaps the greater part of the resemblance was only ever in her mind to begin with. Bravery and some skill with a sword do not make him her husband. 

“Your devotion warms my heart,” she says, unable to resist letting the barest trace of sarcasm creep into her tone, but she gives him a crooked smile to try and make up for it. “However, the best chance we have of not being seen is to take as few people as possible. And since I doubt any of you will let me go alone, I suppose that means I’m stuck with Athos.”

“How do we know you won’t try to kill him?” Aramis objects.

“How do I know he won’t try to kill _me_?” she replies pointedly. “I get livres out of this, and Athos gets to follow his duty, so we’ll both be following our heart’s desires. That will have to suffice.”

X_X_X_X_X

They are in the passage heading into the palace when he pushes her against the wall again. “If you’re planning a betrayal…”

Just like last night, she feels her heartbeat speed up until it’s almost painful. The weight of memories threaten to crush her, but it’s worse for him, and she takes her pleasure from that. “To what end?”

The Cardinal’s favour is a valuable thing, of course, but they believe she’s well past the point where that’s obtainable. When she thinks too much about it, she fears they might be right. Perhaps the wisest option would be to disappear right now, flee the Musketeers and Richelieu’s disapproval. But no, she can’t. To do that would be to end up in the gutters again. If she can pull this off and regain the Cardinal’s esteem, even if it’s for only a few days, she can take the spy’s traditional path of retirement, disappearing into the night with as many livres as she can carry. He’ll probably be glad to see the back of her, and if he’s still grateful for this endeavour, he’s unlikely to pursue her. That’s why continuing to side with him has always been the better bet, even ignoring her personal preferences. She doubts Treville will be able to track her down like Richelieu could.

And she’ll have gotten her revenge on Athos, finally finished this, finally killed him just like he killed her all those years ago. She thinks of that feeling of emptiness again and feels sick with it, but it must be done, it _must_ be. It’s been what drives her for half a decade now, and she can’t continue to stew in rage and hatred forever. He needs to pay for what he did.

Perhaps she could have chosen a simpler, quicker revenge though. After she realised his death was a charade, she could have returned to the room with d’Artagnan and shot him through the head, another little brother killed – wouldn’t that have been symmetrical? Why hadn’t she done that? Or if only Athos’s death would satisfy her desire for vengeance, she could slide her hand into one of the hidden places in her skirts, pull out the little bottle of poison, and deal with him right now. If she wanted it bloodier than poison, she doesn’t doubt her ability to take one of his weapons. Of course, those revenges would be unlikely to help her with the Cardinal, and she would end up fleeing with nothing and nowhere to go yet again. She needs time to get to all of her stashes and decide on a plan. But she wonders if she may have bitten off more than she can chew with this particular plot.

Athos glares down at her, and she feels rage and hatred choke her, but she feels something else as well, and hates him more for provoking in her emotions that she believed herself done with years ago.

After a long minute of the two of them glaring at each other, she swats at his hand and he releases her grudgingly, moving back.

“Are you ready to go on?” she enquires with icy politeness. “Or would you like to continue throwing vague threats at me? The evidence is waiting… and so is d’Artagnan.”

“But he’d rather not be waiting for _you_ ,” he spits out, provoked to anger by the sultry tone she uses to say his friend’s name. He must know he shouldn’t say it, but he does anyway, and he continues viciously as if he can no longer hold back, “If Constance gave him the slightest sign she was willing to leave her husband…”

She feels a surge of spiteful pleasure at his apparent need to hurt her, and at how incompetently he’s doing it. “That dull little landlady? Oh, I’m sure he thinks himself in love with her. But a few nights with me has been known to change men’s minds about a lot of things, and for him, I’m willing to put in the effort. I know tricks that Constance Bonacieux would blush or faint at the mere suggestion of.”

“You’re dead to any proper feeling, aren’t you?” He looks at her like he would like to kill her, but this time restrains himself from reaching for her. Perhaps he’s afraid if he does, he’ll go through with it.

“I’m dead in general as far as the world’s concerned, aren’t I? And so are you. What a pretty pair of corpses we make.”

“It really doesn’t bother you that you’re d’Artagnan’s second choice? That he would throw you over in a moment for her? I doubt he’ll ever love you the way he loves Constance, whatever ‘tricks’ you choose to employ. He knows what you are.”

She looks away from him, fighting down the urge to laugh. It’s difficult, and she knows her shoulders shake with the force of it, but eventually she manages to marshal her expression and turn back to him. When she does, she finds he looks stricken. For a moment this almost makes her panic, wondering if he’s seen through her – but no, he thinks he brought her to the verge of tears, she realizes. That nearly sets off her laughter again, but she contains it.

“Men often think they want an ingénue,” she says, purely because it would be suspicious if she didn’t strike back at him after that comment. “But the wise ones come to realise purity and innocence are only illusions, and dangerous to place their faith in. Perhaps d’Artagnan will prove wiser than you.” Unlikely, in her opinion, but what does she care? 

Thankfully, he lets the subject go for now, allowing her to lead him further down the passageway, although his eyes are dark with fury and hatred. She can feel the heat of his rage, and it warms her. For just a moment, she wishes he would lose his temper again, and crush her against the wall once more, because there is something both dangerous and addictive in being so close to him.

It’s not long before they’re nearly at the Cardinal’s chambers. Apart from the Cardinal himself, no one knows the room better than her. Which is how she knows that he doesn’t keep his private accounts there, where any servant cleaning or spy searching the place might come across them. She said that the Cardinal is above all things neat, but that was yet another lie – he is above all things cautious.

“I’ll check the corridor,” she murmurs to Athos, stilling his automatic protest with a hand over his mouth. She can feel the bristles of his facial hair against her palm. Once upon a time, he would have rubbed his face against her hand like a cat seeking affection, would have pressed kisses to her palm – now, he looks as if her touch burns him. “Feel free to come after me with your sword if I’m gone too long, but I’m better at this than you are, and you can’t just run out there even with your scarf over your face.”

After a long pause, he nods. The second she moves her hand, he rubs his own over his mouth and chin, as if to scrub away her brief touch. Then he pulls up his scarf and starts fixing it over his face, apparently reminded by her comment. Not the best disguise, but she’s worn worse.

She leans in close again, feeling the heat of him against her for one moment, and frees his gun. “Just in case I meet resistance,” she says innocently, evading him as he tries to grab it back.

“Don’t shoot anyone,” he orders as quietly as possible, but she’s already out in the corridor. She assumes he’s including himself in the order. Of course, she has no intention of obeying it.

There’s a man at the far end, Richelieu’s most trusted and most discreet Red Guard. He spots her in a second, and she gives him a decisive nod. He bows his head, then disappears, leaving the corridor free and clear. Hopefully, he’ll have them prepared to move quickly at a yell, without knowing why.

“It’s clear,” she calls out quietly.

Athos follows her through the corridor into the room, hand on his sword, ready for anyone to interrupt them, and ready to turn on her if she levels the gun at him. It’s tempting to do it just to prove him right, but instead she ignores him, and moves towards the secret cabinet. She waits until Athos is well into the room before pulling at it. 

When she opens it, Richelieu steps out. It should be undignified – he’s not one for sneaking around, the Cardinal. But instead he sweeps out like he’s coming down a grand staircase. She could be a footman, holding the door open for him, and then politely closing it behind him with a click. Once again, it’s impossible to tell it was there once closed.

“Anything?” Richelieu asks her quietly.

“They don’t have a scrap of evidence,” she says with quiet satisfaction at having been proved right, and he nods and moves his attention to Athos.

“What do we have here?” he says with dry amusement.

Athos looks shocked for a brief moment, gaze moving from her to the Cardinal. He glances behind him at the door, but the sound of calls and echoing footsteps is already coming from the corridor – the Red Guards on a well-timed patrol.

“ _You_ ,” Athos says venomously, turning to her with a look of black hatred.

She simply meets it, lips quirked, waiting to hear what he has to say. He’s done nothing but talk about how treacherous she is, so why pretend surprise when she betrays him? He can be surprised at her method and means, surprised that for once her overall allegiance has remained consistent, surprised that the plan has gone so rapidly and bizarrely wrong – but he should hardly be surprised she’s betrayed him. She’s been honest from the beginning about her fury towards him. She told him to stay out of her way, and if he’d listened, they would not have come to this point.

“Searching my chambers? And only this morning Captain Treville was lauding you as his best Musketeer to the King, and explaining how you were integral to all his schemes,” Richelieu says, a smile curling his thin lips. “Disgraceful.”

“This was the plan?” Athos asks incredulously. “To get me caught stealing from the Louvre?”

“Not entirely,” Milady murmurs, then directs her next words to the Cardinal. “Try not to tense up.”

The shot deafens all of them, and Richelieu staggers back two steps, blood already wetting his sleeve. The shot was very good, although at this range that’s not much of an achievement – the bullet’s buried in the wall, only just nicking his upper arm on the way past, and the wound will heal quickly with no chance of permanent damage. Milady weighs the smoking gun in her hand, moving several cautious steps back from Athos, whose stunned look is rapidly turning to absolute fury. Outside, there are yells as the Red Guards hear the shot, and from the sound of it the corridor is filling with people. They’ll be here in seconds.

“Treville’s most trusted man, an assassin,” Richelieu says quietly, still cool, although slightly paler than before. He squeezes his hand over the wound to slow the bleeding, barely flinching. “Yesterday the Musketeers lied to the King and First Minister, defied the law, and broke into the Chatelet. Today it’s invading the Louvre, and making an attempt on the First Minister’s life? I don’t know if the regiment will be dismantled, but I doubt the King will place his trust in Treville or the rest of you ever again. In fact, I doubt he’ll ever believe another word the Musketeers say.” Done with gloating, he raises his voice just as people begin to reach the doorway. “ _Guards! Help! An attack!_ ”

Milady throws Athos’s musket to land at his feet, dropped there after his crime. But even as the Red Guards pour into the room – not just Red Guards, but other people, devoted palace servants, a dozen impeccable and honest witnesses racing in to see a bleeding Cardinal, a smoking gun, and a badly-disguised Musketeer – even as a variety of weaponry is levelled at him, Athos is lunging for her.

She realizes a second later that she’s come to rely too much on her ability to slither out of men’s grips, to evade them easily. She should have taken more steps away. It’s not Athos’s rage that gives him an advantage as she tries to duck away from the scene now – it’s experience. He’s chased her before, and he knows which way she’ll zigzag, the feints she’ll make, and while he was barely trying to catch her back then, just enjoying the chase, he’s in deadly seriousness now. She tries to dart behind the assembled ranks of guards, but in half a second, he has her held in front of him with his belt knife at her throat. His arm around her waist is an iron bar.

“Order them down or I’ll kill her,” he threatens the Cardinal. His scarf slides down as she tries to struggle against him, so that his breath strikes her ear. Everyone in the room can recognise him now, but it hardly matters – his body will be recognisable enough anyway. Every person in this room will be able to state confidently that it was Athos the Musketeer, undeniably, and a threat to the Cardinal’s life so soon after his near-death by poison will send the King mad with fear and fury. He’ll see the Musketeers as nest of vipers, and act accordingly. Treville is done for, and the Musketeers with him, and Athos will die whatever she feels about that (and she’s unsure of her own feelings there) – but what about her? Will she survive?

When she swallows, she can feel the coolness of the blade against her scar, and the heat of Athos pressed along the length of her back is curiously distracting, but she keeps her eyes trained on Richelieu. She can see the calculation in his own shrewd gaze, see him weighing up whether to save her or not. Athos won’t get out whatever he threatens her or anyone else with, but Richelieu is perfectly capable of intimidating him into standing down and not harming her.

She can almost see his train of thought, after all these years predicting what he wants and what he needs her to do. She knows what he’s considering. On the positive side, her years of service, her successful attempt to completely discredit the Musketeers, her future usefulness. On the negative, her recent failures, her personal entanglements, and the information she has that she could use against him in future.

She can see when he reaches a decision. It’s not in her favour.

“It’s a bluff,” he tells the hesitant guards behind them, seemingly still unbothered by his musket wound. “She’s his accomplice. Kill them both before they can escape.”

They’re both moving before he’s finished his sentence, Milady pushing the blade away from her throat and diving for the gap between two Red Guards, Athos letting the knife drop to draw his sword. Everyone’s confusion is just enough that Milady wrests a gun off one of the guards, shoots him in the thigh, and lets his screech of pain disorient everyone further; Athos uses the moment to stab another in the side and push him hard into the group. One of the men manages to grab Milady by her blue cloak, but she lets it drop behind her as she shoves her way past them and out of the room. Two bullets narrowly miss her as she heads down the corridor, but the ones at the back can’t fire around the press of people – large numbers are not always an advantage. Speed is not her skill, especially not in this dress, but unpredictability and stealth are, so she takes the nearest turn to make use of it, and then the next, and then she’s yanking open a piece of the wall that no one else besides her and the Cardinal know is a door.

Athos follows her, just as quickly, able to track her better than the guards. He’s bleeding a little from one arm, but otherwise unharmed, and most of their pursuers have used their shots by now, wasted in that first moment of panic. He still has his sword raised, and he could stab it through her heart in a moment and keep fleeing, but he hesitates. Perhaps that’s what motivates her to hold the hidden door wide and snap, “Hurry!”

He fits himself into it and she piles in after, shoving him along and closing the door quickly, but this particular cramped passage won’t even take them to another wing, so they need to be quick.

It’s a frantic, confused race. The Louvre has more boltholes and hidden passageways than any hideout Milady’s ever had, and no one can memorise the layout of a place like a thief, but it seems the whole place is hunting them already and the hue and cry is ridiculous. If she surprised Athos, if she took a turn too quickly, if she slammed a single door in his face as she went through it ahead, she could lose him – and he would be lost, utterly so. The passages are dark, confined, winding, and seemingly random, and she could leave him to die with almost no effort at all.

She has no idea what possesses her that she doesn’t.

X_X_X_X_X

Outside the palace, he continues to follow her as they thread their way through the streets. She’s looking for a quick way out of Paris – going to ground here will not end well. She’s mildly surprised he’s not making for the Garrison, but he must be clever enough to realise there’s nothing they can do to hide him right now. It won’t be long until half the city is after them.

Richelieu will have people looking for her – they’ve well and truly severed their working relationship now, she thinks dryly. But the guards themselves may only want Athos. He’s the one believed to have physically taken a shot at Richelieu, and as a man and a soldier, is far more likely to be viewed as the active party in the attempt. In comparison, she’ll probably be considered irrelevant, thought of as complicit in the crime, but largely passive and unthreatening, just a wife dragged into her husband’s scheme. The bulk of the search will be for Athos, and perhaps his friends, since even though they’ve done nothing everyone will believe they have information at least.

She picks the lock to a stable easily, and he follows her into the dim building. She’ll need a horse to flee. Perhaps he can take one too, and then they can go their separate ways – she needs as much distance as she can get and he’s unlikely to help with that. If she had any sense, she would already have lost him in the streets, leaving him to find his own way. But then if she had sense, she would have let him die in the Louvre.

The moment they’re out of sight of the street his sword is out, the point of it at her throat, pressing. He walks her back until her back’s against the wall, trapped. “You betrayed us.”

“I’m aware, yes,” she says, swallowing with difficulty. She can feel that her eyes have widened, that she’s staring at him with the shocked and uncomprehending gaze of a child, although she doesn’t know why she’d be surprised he intends to kill her for this. Yet somehow, she is. Surprised, hurt, almost betrayed by it, even after mentally mocking him for feeling betrayed by her. She’s trembling. “I was present for it.”

“You and Richelieu came up with this scheme from the start.”

“Only from the moment I realised you were alive and well,” she says, as if that makes a difference, as if it’s an excuse. She tries to draw herself up again, to find the fire of anger inside her that’s always powered her. “You should’ve considered carefully before you tried to fool me, Athos. And you should never have gone for my throat.” As he is now, once again. She nearly reaches up to touch her choker, to ensure it’s still in place, but she doesn’t want to force him to make a move.

“You knew d’Artagnan didn’t shoot me,” he says slowly. She can see his mind working, checking every angle. “You never cared about him, you were never on the outs with the Cardinal, and there was no proof of anything in that room. Every single thing you’ve said and done was just to manoeuvre us into looking like we were out to bring low or kill the Cardinal, whatever the cost, so that the King would never believe any real evidence against the man.”

“It was a long shot him believing it anyway,” she says, choosing not to mention that she’s clearly on the outs with the Cardinal now. She should have cut her losses earlier. She outplayed them, but Richelieu can outplay anyone, and she should have realised she had no chances left. Now she doesn’t know if she should feel smug that her scheme succeeded or just angry that said successful scheme simply gave her patron an easy way to be rid of her. Not that he has to do the job himself – from the look of it, her husband plans to finish what he started five years ago. The metal at her throat feels more like a promise than an idle threat.

“I should’ve guessed. All those comments about how d’Artagnan was like me, how you cared for him, the tricks you would use to bring him back under your spell… simply to torture me.” He still looks tortured by them. It’s almost sweet, how this still seems to be a sticking point for him, a priority even in this situation. “You were certainly never willing to trade yourself for his survival.”

“No one’s _that_ good in bed, Athos,” she says. “D’Artagnan is pretty enough, but there’s not much there, is there?”

“D’Artagnan’s an honourable man. I’m not surprised you can’t comprehend that. He -”

“Is a dupe, regardless of whose dupe he is.” She shrugs. Perhaps he intends to kill her, but she has an ace up her sleeve, and she’s never let the threat of death still her tongue before. “I tried to use him against you, you tried to use him against me, and we both achieved it in a way. You’ve certainly got him believing you’re a heroic figure, haven’t you? He was practically panting for the opportunity to abuse my trust and cause my death.”

“What trust?” he asks darkly. “If you’d ever bothered to really learn who he was, you would have realised he was incapable of turning on his friends, no matter the provocation.”

“Defending a wife from her murderous husband seems the kind of thing Musketeers should do,” she points out. “And a bullet seems fair recompense for your actions against me. But then, I forget – actions can only be wrong when they’re done by people you consider to be bad. As men of honour, you can feel free to lie, cheat and murder, and never suffer a qualm.”

“We do what we must for France,” he snaps. “We are not murderers.” His eyes fall to her neck, to the choker that hides his work and its heart-shaped pendant, and for a second he seems almost to slump, suddenly exhausted. He corrects himself, his voice almost soft. “My brothers are not murderers.” 

At least he can admit it. It would almost cause her to feel sympathy, but the idea of feeling sympathy for this is repugnant. How dare he make what he did into a source of self-indulgent sorrow, with his blade still at her throat? “Perhaps, perhaps not, but they are not good men, either, or at least not as good as you think them. Did a single one of them flinch when you told them why I wanted revenge on you? Or did they grieve for you, Athos, for the pain you’ve suffered through?”

At that, he does flinch. The point of the sword does not waver from its position, though. She tries to judge if she could knock it aside, if she could be gone before he could catch her – unlikely, not with her in skirts, not in this enclosed space. And she has no weapons besides a few poisons and potions, too impossible to use in this situation. 

“They would have pitied you, if they hadn’t known you for a killer,” he says eventually.

“Hardly,” she says bitterly. “I might not have spent time with the others, but d’Artagnan at least is the kind to always choose self-righteousness over understanding. Just a few days ago he pried a story of attempted murder, or at least unjust execution, out of the victim… and he immediately thought how he could turn her pain to his advantage, in order to ruin her life. What kind of man does that?”

“D’Artagnan was doing what was necessary to ensure the mastermind behind the attack on the Queen was revealed.” Athos presses the point of his blade slightly more into her, denting the skin. Any more force and it will split, red and raw, her voice taken from her again, perhaps for good. “What you and the Cardinal did could not remain a secret. There needed to be justice for your crimes. D’Artagnan was simply doing all he could to find it.”

She surprises herself with a harsh laugh. “My God, the hypocrisy! D’Artagnan’s a hero for pretending to turn on his friends in an attempt to entrap me, but I’m a monster for returning the favour? I didn’t start this, Athos, I merely showed more skill at it.” She notices that the locket has swung out of his shirt. As always, the sight of it fills her with confusion, even in the midst of all this.

“Do you really consider yourself the victim here? Not the Queen, or the convent full of nuns you nearly signed a death warrant for, or the Musketeers. You.” His expression is an odd mix of incredulity and naked fury. “After everything you’ve done – the men you’ve murdered, the women you’ve tried to have killed, the lies you’ve told, the lives you’ve ruined – in your eyes, we’re the ones at fault?”

She lists his crimes, as she sees them, voice steadily rising as she does. “You threatened my life – again. You manipulated me. You let me think you were _dead_!” 

The noise he makes is too pained to be a laugh. He reaches up his free hand to wrap around the locket, though she doesn’t think it’s a deliberate action as much as an ingrained reflex. It seems to be a familiar, unconscious gesture, done often, like a religious man might reach for the comfort of his cross – though what comfort that locket could give him she has no idea. “Now who’s the hypocrite?”

“All you needed to do was leave me be. I could have slit your throat; I didn’t. You chose to come after me, to provoke the Cardinal, to create a situation in which I had no choice.” She swore many years ago that she would never let a man leave her with no choices again, but like most of her promises, it’s been impossible to keep. Again and again she’s backed into corners, pushed into dead end alleyways – she’s an animal caught in a trap, and all she can do is scramble for any chink of light she can see, every time.

“You like to claim you have no choices, don’t you?”

“And you like to think that everyone has the freedom you do.” She smiles humourlessly, eyes fixed on his. “What would you have had me do, Athos? Fail the Cardinal, and suffer the consequences? Allow the Musketeers to kill me? Flee the city with nothing, to end up in a gutter or a brothel? God forbid I try to survive, when your _honour_ leaves no options but my death or debasement!” She’s angry enough to spit at his feet, but she doesn’t, because dignity is one of the greatest defences a woman can have, and she has no intention of losing hers. She doesn’t even let that rage show in her face, only in her voice.

“You’re a liar, a murderer, and a traitor.” His voice is ice cold. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you where you stand.”

She could mention that she just saved him from death, but since she’s the one who led him into danger in the first place, he probably wouldn’t find it a convincing reason. Instead, she buries her rage, calming herself, making sure that not a trace of fear or fury shows. Once she’s found her equilibrium again, she smirks at him and says, “If you do, no one will ever see Constance Bonacieux alive again.”

For a long, silent moment, he just stares at her, eyes widening. Then they narrow in utter fury, his sword point dropping from her skin as he lowers it slowly, then sheathes it. She lets her smirk spread across her face in response, deliberately taunting him with her own untouchability.

That’s when he knocks her out.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s a lovely day, sun shining down on the picturesque scene – a nearby river, a grassy hill, two horses tied to a tree. And a beautiful woman lying on the grass, curly dark hair spread out around her head, pretty striped dress catching slightly in the breeze, revealing the layers of petticoats below it. She looks peaceful, in her sleep, no malice or calculation hardening her expression, no pain or fury tautening her limbs. Defenceless, sweet, serene, and breathtakingly beautiful – a nymph at rest in a meadow.

He watches her blink her way awake, struggling to consciousness apparently through pure determination. Her head must be aching (he suppresses an instinctive flare of guilt for striking a woman), but he’s spent a lot of time learning the perfect hit to cause unconsciousness without risking too much damage, so she should be fine. He’s bound her hands tightly and effectively, though, and his one remaining weapon, his sword, is well away from her reach.

Predictably, the first thing she says is a taunt. “How unchivalrous. What happened to not attacking a defenceless woman?”

“You’re never defenceless. You’re the most dangerous person I know. You always have been.” He remembers saying the same to Treville, and thinks with distant amusement that next time, his Captain will believe him implicitly when he says something like that, and never risk working with the person. Assuming Treville is still a Captain, after today’s work – his amusement vanishes immediately.

“Truly? I’m flattered,” she drawls, sitting up. She leans forward slightly to move the weight of her body off her bound arms, shifting, and the lean and her arms being pulled behind her by the bonds only make the pale curves of her breasts above that corset more prominent. He averts his eyes as a method of self-defence, the sweet scent of jasmine wafting up to him and scrambling his mind the way it always has. How can she still smell of it now? “But how can you possibly be so sure of how dangerous I am, when in fact you barely know me anymore? You’ve encountered me only a handful of times in over half a decade.”

“Every one of which has been illuminating.” Illuminating is probably the correct word to describe a burning house, he thinks, and maybe the burning of all of his beliefs as well.

“I was hoping for ‘memorable’, but that’s even better. Still, ‘always’ seems an exaggeration. Did I really seem so dangerous when I was rolling about in meadows with you?” She looks around incuriously, as if to verify if this is also a meadow. With that innocent expression on her face, her hair loosened, lounging on the green grass, she could have stepped straight from a dream of five years ago. It makes his chest ache as if he’s being crushed by stones.

He knows the agony shows in his tone when he replies, perhaps even more than his anger. “No, you didn’t _seem_ dangerous. That’s what made you dangerous. A woman so lacking in any real emotion that she could fake an entire life, never letting the pretence drop for a single second, coldly judging every word and action to fool everyone around her until she’s ready to strike... what could be more dangerous than that?”

“Does it help you sleep at night, Athos, if you tell yourself that the woman you loved – the woman you _murdered_ – was nothing more than fantasy?” She meets his eyes with that unwavering gaze, eyes clear and lovely and green as the grass, and he despises her so much he almost can’t contain it. She has no right to look like a dream and be a nightmare. “She couldn’t possibly have been a real person, who had real feelings, who made real mistakes.”

“None of it was real. Everything was a lie.” The words sound dull, learned by rote. He’s had five years of them humming in his head to ensure that.

“Oh. I see that it does. You’re wrong, you know. The woman you loved was very real, although she’s certainly dead and gone now. You made sure of that.” Now feeling bleeds into her tone, an edge of rawness that rubs him raw in turn. It’s a lie, of course, but everything is, and that’s never stopped them from hurting him.

“The woman I loved would not have been capable of any of the things you’ve done.”

He can’t believe they’re having this argument here and now. They have far more urgent concerns, but as always, the past exercises too strong a pull for him to draw away from it. Every word she utters is like a nail being hammered through him, which is no doubt why she’s choosing these specific words. What’s worse pain – the idea that his loving wife never existed at all and she was always a monster, or the possibility there was something more in her once and he destroyed it with his actions? He knows which he’d rather believe, but sometimes in unguarded moments he wonders.

“I’ll take the blame for many things, Athos, but not for you choosing to place me on a pedestal. Whatever lies I told, I never claimed to be a saint.” He utters a dry _hah_ at that, but she keeps her eyes steady on his, and continues. “I never pretended I would martyr myself, that I would serenely accept and forgive any harm done to me, that I was incapable of causing harm myself. Though I suppose in one sense I did choose death over unfaithfulness, didn’t I? Saint Agnes would be proud.”

The patron saint of chastity? Unlikely, and her claim to it infuriates him. He knows what she means, the old lie about Thomas, and that pains him; but her reference to unfaithfulness angers him considerably more. Has any man ever had a wife who betrayed him as completely and as constantly as his? “She would have spat upon the life you live, the things you’ve done,” he says, spitting the words himself. “Saint Agnes didn’t seduce her executioner and flee to plot revenge.”

“Then she might be jealous as well as proud, I suppose.” She seems to have woken in a surprisingly tranquil mood, because there’s still no rage on that still, pale face. “You can’t resent me for doing whatever it takes to survive, Athos. Well, I suppose you can, but there’s no point in it – I won’t apologise for living.”

“I never expected you to.”

“How magnanimous.” She looks around with more curiosity this time, apparently abandoning this topic. Perhaps now he’s infuriated, confused, and hurt, she’s achieved what she was aiming for by bringing it up to begin with. “Where are we?”

“Just outside Paris,” he says, aware that they shouldn’t be. The charge of attempting to assassinate the First Minister is not a small one. News will spread fast. Detailed descriptions and perhaps even sketches of them will follow shortly. They should be as far away as possible, and they would be, except for one problem – he has no idea where to go.

“Must’ve been quite an adventure, getting out with an unconscious woman and two horses,” she remarks, but he ignores this, trying to think.

Obviously, he needs to meet with the others, find out what’s happening with the rest of the Musketeers, make some kind of plan. But how can he meet with the others when he can’t risk entering Paris? He doesn’t have the supplies to hide out in forests, and they don’t have a meeting place set up. He can’t think of any location his friends know of but no one else does. So he needs to come up with somewhere that Porthos, d’Artagnan and Aramis will look for him at before the Cardinal will think to. Somewhere nearby, preferably.

And it’s not like his own safety is the only urgent problem here.

“Constance Bonacieux,” he says flatly, before she can speak again. “Where is she? Who’s holding her?”

“So much concern. I might start to believe d’Artagnan’s not the only one with an interest,” she says lightly, as if he hadn’t just prioritised a conversation about their past over Constance’s safety. “I wonder if her husband’s found him yet? They must both be frantic with worry, if he has.” She looks so indifferent to this that he wonders how he ever fell for the lie she cared for d’Artagnan as anything more than a useful tool. He was so distracted by jealousy – if she hadn’t used that, would he have realised earlier that she was manipulating them?

“Anne. Haven’t you hurt enough people?”

For the first time, rage flashes in her eyes, though he doesn’t know if it’s from the name or the question. “You dare to talk to me about hurt?” The unexpected distress in her tone makes her sound both younger and older at once – young, because it seems like the hurt cry of a child, and old, because the weight of history behind the question is palpable.

They stare at each other for an endless moment, on a grassy hill, with the wide, spreading branches of a nearby tree shading the space, and it could be Pinon all over again – and that, unfortunately, makes him realise he does know a place fairly near Paris that his friends would be likely to check long before the Cardinal will. It has weapons, and perhaps some wine survived the fire, and there is definitely a space to hide in. It’s only that he would rather spit himself on his sword than go there again.

No. He’ll find somewhere else.

“Let me go and I’ll tell you where she is,” she says eventually.

“What, would you shout it back to me as you ride away? I doubt it. You’re in no position to bargain.”

“Constance Bonacieux would disagree.”

This is useless. He has no idea if she’s even telling the truth about having Madame Bonacieux.

Except… except that Milady de Winter (the name is beginning to become more familiar to him, but he thinks he’ll always automatically go to call her Anne) could have left him to die in the Louvre. Why help him get out, why lead the way? Did she think she might need his assistance if it came to a fight? Whatever the reason, she helped him, and he came close to killing her afterwards out of rage despite that. It doesn’t negate her betrayal, and it doesn’t incline him to mercy, but her actions do give him pause. 

“I’ll let you go after you tell me where she is,” he says, and then when it immediately occurs to him she’s likely to lie about the location, he adds, “That is, when I have confirmation from my friends that she’s safe.”

“So I’m to stay with you while you get a message to your friends with the location, they go on a heroic rescue, and then somehow manage to send word back to us they’ve succeeded?” She raises an eyebrow at him.

It’s not a perfect plan, he admits to himself. He’s not even sure if he can hold her that long, but either way, he definitely _shouldn’t_. He should probably force Constance’s location out of her and then kill her, but he’s not sure of his ability to do either of those things.

“Yes,” he says bluntly.

“And after that you’ll let me go? Why should I trust you?”

“I give you my word, when I hear that Constance is safe, I’ll let you go.”

“Because you always keep your word,” she says dryly. “As a man of honour, how could you do otherwise? You forget I know you, Athos. You’ve broken your word to me before.”

He did, but that’s hardly fair. When he swore to let nothing come between them, he was in ignorance of what that meant, and she wasn’t. He’s no merchant, but he knows that a deal where one party withholds vital information from the other isn’t necessarily considered binding. His promises to her are as void as d’Artagnan’s promise to kill her husband, and it’s her lies that made them that way, not his actions. Nevertheless, he feels a lash of guilt and pain at the memory – when he swore that vow to her he didn’t list exceptions, he didn’t make clauses and sub-clauses, he didn’t equivocate, because he was never a merchant, simply a man desperately in love. A man she took advantage of.

She’s still studying him. “Exactly,” she says, although he hasn’t spoken. “So why should I trust your word?”

“Do you have a choice?” he says sharply.

“And you so recently castigated me for claiming lack of choice. Very well, then. Madame Bonacieux is in the care of a man named Sarazin, assuming he hasn’t gotten bored and killed her yet.”

“If she’s dead, you will die as well,” he promises, though he may be as incapable of keeping this promise as any of the others.

“Then I’ll hope that the incentive of my services is enough to encourage patience in Sarazin.” Before he can (jealously) ask what that means, she’s listing off an address dryly and quickly.

He scrambles for the saddlebags, but of course, there’s no paper or ink in them. Why would there be? He needs to find someone he knows who’s trustworthy enough to deliver a verbal message, or at least someone well-disposed enough to him to let him write out a missive and pay for it to be delivered. That’s not a long list.

It occurs to him that he does know someone near enough to Paris who’s well-disposed to him, and who will definitely have the required supplies to write a message to his friends – although this is hardly the right company to show up with.

X_X_X_X_X

Ninon’s face is a picture as she opens the door, pure happiness spreading across it. Her lips part, ready to exclaim, but he interrupts her hurriedly.

“We won’t be here long,” he says. “Not even an hour. The risk is too great.” The Cardinal knows this address, after all. “I apologise for encroaching on your life.”

“We?” she asks blankly, smile dying, and then she catches sight of Milady de Winter a few feet back, arms bound behind her back, hair in disarray, and a bored expression on her face.

She’s been complaining for almost the entire ride, and he’s been barely restraining himself from doing the same – he can’t trust her enough to untie her or let her ride one of the horses herself, so they’ve been sharing a horse, switching between the two they have regularly to prevent tiredness. Heaving a tied woman up onto a horse isn’t light work, and nor is keeping her steady while riding, and the rest is purely torture. Having her in front of him (she can’t hold on from behind with her hands bound) makes it uncomfortable to hold the reins, but if that was the only discomfort, it would hardly bother him. Having the curves of her back and behind pressed against the length of his body, rubbing against him in time with every step of the horse, has been agonisingly pleasurable. Her maliciously gleeful laugh when she felt the effects of it against her lower back is still ringing in his ears an hour on.

Ninon’s smile has completely left her now. “Madame de la Chapelle? Why is she here? Why are you with her?”

“She’s my… prisoner,” he explains briefly. It’s a better word than any other, he decides. “Please, Ninon. I need to get a message to my brothers as soon as I can. A woman’s life is at stake, and the Cardinal’s men are after us. This will not wait.”

“I see.” Ninon’s lips firm, and she nods decisively. “You’d best come in, then.”

“Thank you.”

She addresses Anne now, a scowl on her face, voice sharp. “Unless you’re worried about the depravities I could inflict on you, of course.”

He explains the situation in slightly more detail but still as quickly as he can while Ninon bustles around fetching things. She listens, brow furrowed in concern, and agrees to help however she’s able. She gives him a huge sheaf of paper and ink, far more than he needs, and promises to employ someone from the village to take the missive directly to the house they were previously hiding out at in Paris (it’s more likely to find them safely if not addressed to the Garrison now, he suspects). Still, her gaze strays again and again to the woman she knew as Madame de la Chapelle, who’s staring back at her meditatively.

“Surprised your attempt to kill me failed?” Ninon asks eventually, voice sharp, gliding gracefully to stand in front of Milady.

“Surprised you clearly haven’t learned how to clean your own dresses after months without servants, in fact,” she replies, voice poisonously sweet. “And I thought learning was your raison d'être. Are you finding life as a peasant equal to your previous one?”

The sudden slap seems to surprise them both, and certainly surprises Athos. It doesn’t knock over Milady, though it seems fierce enough it should send her flying. Instead, it only leaves a red flag burning bright on her cheek, and an almost impressed smile twisting her mouth, which does nothing to soothe Ninon’s fury.

He was bent over his writing, but leaves it and goes to pull Ninon back if necessary. “Enough,” he tells her, when it looks like she might strike again, catching her arm gently.

Ninon glances at him, affronted. “She would have watched me burn!”

“I didn’t, actually, I had other tasks to attend to that day,” Milady says, in the tone of one helpfully making sure everyone has their facts straight. They make an interesting picture, standing next to each other, one dark and one fair: Ninon traditionally lovely with a classical set to her features and her face set in righteous fury, like some Biblical figure dispensing justice; Milady unconventionally beautiful with her cat’s eyes and one-sided smirk, surely the personification of some sort of unholy temptation.

“She’s bound,” Athos settles on, still speaking to Ninon. “It’s dishonourable to strike someone while they’re bound.”

Ninon looks from Milady to Athos, then back again. “Fine. But one last question – does the guilt burn you, when you think of what you’ve done? The help you’ve taken away from the women of Paris?”

“What help?” Milady replies lightly, and her tone is so spiteful that for a moment Athos thinks Ninon will hit her again despite agreeing not to. “You liked to show off your learning and privilege to women who had neither. They didn’t need esoteric knowledge, but real options, and you never provided any. It pleased you to make pets of them, but you didn’t _help_. I expect you’re realizing that now you no longer live in the clouds.”

As a blow, it lands. Ninon’s cheeks are almost as red as the one of Milady’s she just slapped. “And for this – for this imagined crime, you considered I deserved to _die_?”

“No, that was merely an observation, not an explanation. Although I will admit to finding your self-righteousness somewhat grating, the reason you had to die was entirely impersonal. I told you that at the time, if you recall.”

“Women like you disgrace our sex,” Ninon informs her, and then turns back to Athos like she’s done with her. If it bothers Milady to be deprived of the last word, her annoyance doesn’t show – if anything, her smirk spreads.

“How have you been doing?” Athos asks, more to curtail any continuation of this argument than for any better reason. “Are the villagers kind?”

“Kind enough. A few rocks are thrown at my school, but so long as I only teach letters and numbers, they leave me be.”

“Bright girls?” he says, trying to pretend interest. At any other time, he might be, but he has other things to concern him at present. He realises with surprise that Ninon is very close to him, and is more surprised to realise that he hadn’t noticed or appreciated it earlier. It still provokes nothing but a mild concern. But then, with Anne in the room, it’s hard to really concentrate on Ninon – she occupies his thoughts to the exclusion of anything else. Right now, she’s still smirking at him, although she’s letting them talk without interruption.

“I have nearly as many boys in my class as girls, in fact. I hadn’t realised how few commoners know how to read.” Ninon looks annoyed by this, as if it’s been done to personally aggravate her.

“It’s kind of you to teach them their letters.” He’s focused back on his own letter now, struggling with the decision of where to tell the others to meet him. He can’t use the actual location – as well draw a map for the Cardinal’s men – so it has to be somewhere he can refer to obliquely. With a sinking feeling, he realises his estate at Pinon really is the best option, as much as he hates the thought of it. He needs somewhere with weapons, supplies, a place to hide and a place to lock Anne up if necessary, and above all he needs it to be empty of innocent people. He’s already risking Ninon by stopping here. Nowhere else meets all those requirements, unfortunately. Just like when Porthos was injured, he needs to choose the right path, even if it’s one that feels like a branding iron being applied directly to his heart.

“Not just letters – I aim to teach them how to treat women, impress on them the idea that they shouldn’t have absolute dominion over their wives. With any luck, they’ll grow up to be like you, seeing themselves as protectors of women instead of their lord and master.”

Milady lets out a peal of surprisingly genuine laughter, and then when they both look at her, tells Ninon, “That’s a funnier thing to say than you’ll ever know.” 

“I don’t suppose you’ve considered gagging her?” Ninon asks Athos, again not deigning to speak to the former Madame de la Chapelle.

“Incessantly,” he mutters, although the surge of guilt through him at the accuracy of Milady’s comment is enough that he doesn’t make any move to do so. He feels callous already. He’s been bound before himself, so he knows her arms and shoulders must be in considerable pain by now, and her arms being behind her must also throw her weight off, so gripping the horse with her thighs to stay upright for hours on end has probably reduced them to agony too. Perhaps instead of being angered by her complaining, he should be surprised she’s not more bitter. Still, it was her choice to betray them, her choice to have Constance abducted, and ultimately her choice to become the monster she is now. He forces his guilt away.

When he looks up as he finishes the message, it’s to find Ninon only inches from him. He clears his throat and steps back, but she looks up at him with a bright gaze and says, “If your time with the Musketeers is truly done, and Paris is no longer safe for you…”

“I hope to fix things,” he tells her, although he has no idea how to do that or even where to start. He needs his brothers. Perhaps they’ll have an idea what to do next.

“Yes, but if you cannot. I know it will take time for the search to die down, but once it does, you could come back here. I know neither of us are believers in marriage, but perhaps we could try?” Ninon gives him a slight smile. “The life of a peasant is a hard one, but I’m sure you could excel at it anyway.”

He can’t imagine anything less likely. Besides, he’s already married. He doesn’t know how to say so, though, not with both of their gazes fixed on him – Ninon’s as blue and guileless as the sky, Milady’s green and dangerous as a snake’s. He turns back to the message again, although there’s really nothing more to add.

“My God, I’d hope he’s never reduced to that,” Milady drawls from the other side of the room. There’s a sour note in her voice, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think it was jealousy. “You two are ridiculous. So many obvious avenues to take, and ‘give up’ is your first suggestion?”

“What would you suggest instead?” he asks, only realising a moment later that there was nothing but curiosity in his question, none of the usual hatred and rage. 

If she’s surprised by his tone, she hides it well. “You need the same thing you’ve always needed – a hold over the Cardinal, even if it only lasts a short while. It’s simply harder to find it now.”

“How would that help us? The Musketeers are utterly disgraced. For all I know they’re disbanded by now, and Treville’s lost his rank.”

“Not if the Cardinal says that it was merely a scheme between himself and Treville,” Milady says, as if it’s that easy. He suspects she’s showing off her own cleverness like she was accusing Ninon of doing. “You know, Richelieu might even appreciate the excuse to bring back Treville – he might not ever agree with the man, but he does respect him, believe it or not.”

“A scheme between him and Treville,” Athos repeats dryly. “A scheme to ruin Treville, nearly kill the Cardinal, lie to and betray the King, and destroy the Musketeers. What would possibly prompt that?”

“Let’s say there was a spy in the palace – Spanish, maybe? No, better to leave it vague. Anyway, that’s why they couldn’t keep His Majesty informed without risking the plan being discovered, since they had reason to believe the informant was placed very closely to him. They needed the spy to approach someone and incriminate themselves, and who better than a Musketeer who shot the Cardinal and is being hunted by everyone? Such a person would be a great draw for a spy, as they’d know state secrets but clearly have no loyalty to France anymore.”

“His Majesty would be furious at being left in the dark, even if he swallowed such a ludicrous story.”

“With Treville and Richelieu both apologising, and the Queen fussing over their bravery? He couldn’t maintain his anger for long. Besides, it would mean Richelieu let himself be shot in service to the King, and that Treville was willing to be utterly shamed in front of all of Paris if that’s what it took.” She smirks at him. “Heroes, the both of them.”

It’s not _entirely_ a terrible plan, he supposes, but it does have some major flaws. “And who’s the spy? Or does it turn out they were incorrect and there wasn’t one? Treville would never agree to frame an innocent man to save himself from disgrace.”

“One of the King’s body servants likes to force the maids,” Milady says, so casually that it takes Athos a moment to process the words. “I doubt the world would miss him if he was broken on the rack. Going to his grave refusing to name his employer, of course, since you’d hardly care to anger Louis towards any particular country. But he’s probably not German, because I suspect in his quarters there’ll be evidence indicating he framed Count Mellendorf, handily letting Mellendorf off the hook as well. Everybody is friends again, and perhaps you’ll even get a thank you from the King himself, Athos. Voila.”

Athos finds himself gaping at her. He has the urge to ask incredulously if she always thinks like this, and if she used to think like this five years ago as well, if the head that slept so soundly on a pillow next to his really contained ideas that could twist and change reality so effortlessly. It’s not how his own mind works. He wonders if this is how the Cardinal thinks as well. He wonders which of them came up with the idea to frame the Count in the first place, and if she regrets it at all.

Ninon also looks slightly dizzy from the casually reeled-off web of lies, deception, blackmail, and international intrigue. However, he caught a momentary flash of approval (however grudging) in her expression at the idea of a rapist being sent to his death. He has an unwelcome second of clarity as he imagines how she would react to Anne’s version of their past, the one where Thomas is a monster, Athos is a murderer, and Anne a defenceless low-born girl blamed and abused by men of power and privilege.

Of course, Ninon wouldn’t believe it, he reminds himself, just like d’Artagnan didn’t, because they both know too well what Milady de Winter is capable of. It’s only that it would also tell Ninon what Athos is capable of, and he’s ashamed enough that his brothers and captain know without adding more people to the list. His guilt and horror at his own actions are private, they always have been – that’s one reason why he tried so hard to avoid exposing Anne’s crimes and connection to him to his brothers. To his shame, the main other reason was that he didn’t want her to see her suffer the consequences of her actions, to see her be executed once again – because while he wanted her to vanish, he paradoxically didn’t want her to actually be _gone_.

“Even if we did have evidence against Richelieu, no one would believe us,” he says eventually. “It’s impossible to blackmail the Cardinal when he knows even cast-iron proof would be ignored by the King if we presented it.” That was the end goal of her little plot, after all.

She shrugs. The gesture makes her wince, thanks to her long-tied arms. “I can’t do everything, Athos. You should be grateful I’m helping at all, given I’m your prisoner, not your partner in crime as everyone thinks.” 

Partners, he thinks suddenly. The Queen. She would definitely listen to evidence against the Cardinal, if it was given to her by them, and His Majesty would not ignore her if she presented it to him in turn. So if they found out anything incriminating, they _could_ use it to blackmail Richelieu into Milady’s scheme, with the Queen’s help. Of course, that’s a rather large ‘if’ – they’ve never been further from proving the Cardinal’s duplicity and treachery. Still, it’s a hope.

They’ve lingered far too long. It’s time to go. Ninon promises to see that the message gets to the others as quickly as possible. He can only hope they’ll be able to deal with this Sarazin, whoever he is, and his people, that they’ll be able to retrieve Constance safely. And that afterwards, they’ll meet him, and they can plan what to do next together.

“I hope to see you again someday, Athos,” Ninon says softly, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she bends an angry gaze on Milady. “As for you, Madame de la Chapelle, I hope to never encounter you again, in this life or any other.”

“There’s no need to be so formal,” Milady says, a hint of a smirk on her tired face. “Now that we know each other more intimately, I’d like to invite you to call me by my real name – Anne. Anne d’Athos.”

X_X_X_X_X

It’s very late at night – so late, in fact, that it’s actually early morning – but they’re still hours away from their goal. They shouldn’t use the main road, but they need to get to Pinon quickly. Or rather, Athos does, even though he wants nothing less.

Ninon gave them most of the food she had on hand. She also gave them another sheaf of papers and some ink, mostly because she had nothing else to give, Athos suspects. Her offerings are split evenly between the two horses’ saddlebags, just in case he has to abandon whichever one is on the leading line for some reason. But Ninon had no wine to share with them (being too much of a connoisseur to tolerate the wines she can now afford), and he knew he couldn’t risk purchasing any nearby in case it led the Cardinal to realise she’d helped them. It’s not like he can stop at an inn on the way for a drink when he’s accompanied by a woman he’s obviously abducted. Milady could easily stir a crowd of drunkards into believing they’re saving her from him. But he’s craving wine so badly he feels barely able to function.

Sometimes he can go a few days without wine before his mind and body start objecting too strenuously, but this doesn’t seem to be one of those times. He’s been drinking very heavily since he found out his wife was a traitor to France and then d’Artagnan’s patroness, and even more heavily once they came up with the plan to use her relationship with d’Artagnan to manipulate her, and his body has grown accustomed to a steady and copious intake of alcohol. He’ll have to partially dry himself out again at the first opportunity, he knows, just like he always does when he starts to slip too far into the bottle, but he can’t do so now. Now, he needs a drink to function, to stop shaking, to concentrate again. And he needs one soon. Sleep would also be nice, but wine is essential.

It didn’t take his unwilling companion long to realise where they were headed, and she’s been completely silent since then, so when she stiffens suddenly and hisses, “Athos,” it’s a surprise.

“What?”

“Listen.”

He hears it too, but it takes him a moment to make the connection she has – to recognise not just the noise of hooves and gentle murmuring of discussion, but the subdued clanking of metal armour. Red Guards, perhaps? It’s a main road away from Paris, after all, one that fugitives might be expected to take, and they were delayed by the stop at Ninon’s new home.

“Untie me,” she hisses.

They can’t get off the road here – it’s too hilly and dark for the horses to manage it – but he still refuses to untie her, giving her a look of disdain. When they finally get there, he can lock her up in the cell-like space near the crypt that contains the hidden armoury, all he has to do is move the guns out of that space before untying her. Until then, she’ll have to ignore her discomfort, and he’ll have to ignore his feelings of guilt at that.

“Athos,” she says, and now she sounds furious, trying to turn her head to face him. “If this comes to a fight, I already have no weapons. Are you going to leave me completely defenceless?”

At that word, he hesitates. The only weapon he has is his sword – his knife and gun were both lost back in Richelieu’s chambers – he’s shaking a little from withdrawal, he’s exhausted, and he has a wounded arm. The sound of hooves is getting closer. As much as he hates to admit it, she’s right – if this comes to a fight, he can’t have her as a liability. He’ll already be enough of one, the condition that he’s in. Before he can talk himself out of it, he leans back, manages to draw his sword awkwardly, and saws open her bonds.

“Thank Christ you can show sense sometimes,” she mutters. She stretches her arms in front of her with a noise that seems to indicate the movement causes both pain and pleasure, throws her leg over the side of the horse, and leaps gracefully down, skirts swinging. “Better to fight them on the ground, the road’s too narrow for being mounted to help overmuch.”

“We don’t even know if it will be a fight,” he says, trying to sound reasonable. “There’s no guarantee it’s guards, and even if it is, they may not be after us. If we’re lucky -”

“When are either of us ever lucky?” she asks rhetorically. She keeps stretching her arms – her hands probably feel like numb, useless slabs of meat after so long tied, but she doesn’t wince, just keeps trying to work them into a semblance of usefulness again.

He keeps an eye on her in case she makes a move to run, but chasing off into the hills with no weapons and no supplies would be suicide, and she seems to know that. Instead, she moves to the side of the road and fades into the shadows as best she can. He dismounts as well, puts out the lantern Ninon gave them, and goes to the other side of the road. Thanks to the horses he’s leading, it’s impossible to hide so well he won’t be seen at all, but they might ride past quickly and not bother to pay too much attention.

As she predicted, they’re not that lucky.

“What have we got here?” the lead man says, pulling up. He holds his lantern high and an oily smirk spreads across his face. “Musketeer scum.”

“You’re mistaken,” Athos says, although he already knows there’s no point. Apparently, he’s memorable.

“The whole of France trying to find you, and here you are,” the man says, grin spreading across his face. He dismounts as well, his men following suit. There’s six of them, and they’re all armed, though none have bothered to draw yet. “Throw down your weapons and surrender, and we won’t beat the shit out of you. How’s that for a deal?” 

“A bad one,” Athos says, and strikes.

He’s dealt with six men before, but never six attacking him at once, in the dark, when he’s weak from withdrawal and exhaustion, and with none of his brothers there to help him. He knocks the first man out with the hilt of his sword before he can act, which betters the odds a little, but there’s still five men. The blows come fast and hard, the flurry apparently never-ending, the clashing of swords deafening, and then the point of one sword pierces his hip and makes him stumble. It’s not a deep wound, but it’s a distraction, and if Milady wasn’t forcing some sort of white cloth against the man’s face before he could take advantage of it Athos would die right then. Instead, the attacker falls to the ground with a faint sigh, and the remaining men realise that Athos isn’t alone.

She fights with ruthless efficiency, but he’s not the only one who’s at less than their best. Arms that have been trapped in one position for hours don’t have the best quickness or range of motion, she’s every bit as exhausted and numb as him, and the nearest enemy doesn’t give her a chance to stoop and grab one of the fallen men’s swords. He’s pushing her back before she can respond, sword ready to attack her, and Athos’s distraction is rewarded by nearly being impaled by one of the others. Two of them go to him, and two to her – either they’ve encountered her before and know she’s easily as dangerous as he is, or they’re men who prefer the idea of inflicting violence on the apparently helpless rather than facing off against the supposed best swordsman in France.

He’s too busy with his own problems to catch everything that’s happening in her fight – his hip’s bleeding sluggishly and making him limp slightly, his arm wound from earlier has reopened, and one of the men he’s dealing with has nearly Musketeer-level training – but he catches glimpses as he keeps looking over frantically, risking death by distraction every time. She takes down one of them by grabbing his knife from his belt and stabbing him swiftly and brutally through the throat, the brief flash of a savage grin just visible on her face in the torchlight, but the other one manages to grasp her wrist and twist it so viciously she loses her grip and the knife clatters to the ground. Then he drives her backwards, slamming her into the nearest tree so hard she loses her breath as well.

He realises, with a rush of nausea, that the man isn’t trying to kill her, despite the death of his comrades and the threat of Athos nearby – showing a lack of sense as well as anything resembling morality. Instead, he’s trying to drag up her skirts, pushing on her raised arms to keep her numb and helpless, his weight trapping her against the tree, dirty fingers going places they shouldn’t. Athos catches a glimpse of her pale, frightened face, and the surge of animal fury that goes through him is perhaps the most intense feeling he’s ever experienced. He stabs the man still tangling blades with him without considering trying to make it non-lethal, then kicks the other hard in his kneecap to bring him down and gives one good slash at head height, blinding him before lowering his blade to gut him quickly.

He staggers towards her struggling form, and again he doesn’t bother to think or consider, but just stabs the man trying to force her through the heart from behind. He realises a second later as she winces that his sword thrust went too far, the point shallowly entering her chest as well, but it’s too late to correct that. Her attacker slumps to the ground as he withdraws his sword, already dead, and he’s left staring at his wife’s shocked face.

And it is undeniably his wife. He remembers this expression, the blankness to her face, the strange childlike confusion in her eyes. He remembers it because he saw it five years ago, with his brother dead and bloody on the floor. She wasn’t shocked when she killed the other man – she looked triumphant, if not outright gleeful – and he killed this one, but she stares down at his body with all the colour leeched from her face.

“Anne?” he asks, suddenly lost.

He has to call her name a couple more times, but she still doesn’t react until he steps forward and lightly shakes her arm. Then she snaps back to lucidity, awareness coming back to her expression. “We should get moving,” she snaps, still sounding shaky. “Unless we want to be caught with the bodies.”

“What was that?”

“What?”

“You – you looked…” he trails off. “I didn’t expect violence to bother you.”

“It doesn’t,” she says, voice harsh. “I was just – surprised.” She meets his eyes, and gives a pained bark of something that sounds almost like laughter but isn’t. “No matter how accustomed you are to violence – or to anything, really – there are always specific triggers that conspire to undo you. Haven’t you found that? I was under the impression we were heading back to one of yours.”

“Triggers,” he echoes hollowly. He doesn’t ask the questions he thinks of, because he can’t bear to – triggers like a man trying to violently force you? Triggers like that man on the ground, choking on his own blood? Triggers like what happened with my brother? Because he’s seen that expression on her before, he’s seen that shock, that delayed reaction. He’s heard that high, uncontrolled note to her voice, seen her move in that unsteady, uncertain way. He’s seen that desolate look in her eyes before, and realising what it means sends him spinning, breaks him, destroys him.

He’s spent half a decade telling himself a story, a story about an innocent, much-loved younger brother, a cold-blooded murderess, and the terrible actions she forced him into by her crimes. A story that didn’t exactly lessen the pain but at least made it manageable, kept the guilt slightly at bay, stopped him from falling into despair, allowed him to live through the heartbreak and loss and terrible grief of it all. A story he needed to cope, to survive, to live with himself. And now, suddenly, he realises it was only ever a story.

Five years ago, she was telling the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When your weird mind game story becomes an even weirder road trip story... still, I hope you guys like it!


	5. Chapter 5

He doesn’t tie her hands again, and he lets her take the other horse. He doesn’t even stop her taking a knife and a sword off one of the dead men, although she doesn’t push her luck by trying for a gun as well. She briefly considers fleeing, but Athos _does_ have a gun now, and he might be willing to shoot her down if she urges her horse into a gallop. Besides, the truth is, she’s beyond exhausted right now. There’s a not-insignificant chance of her falling off the horse if she keeps riding too much longer, in fact. Somewhere in her muddled, slow-moving mind, the only thought able to make itself heard is the unreasonable conviction that she should stay with him now. She can flee tomorrow.

He doesn’t speak at all. He looks like he’s in shock, which is ironic after interrogating her about her own.

Violence is nothing to her, it’s something she’s used to, something she can deal with. People can threaten her, push her against things, hit her, hurt her, do what they like; she’ll survive it and be strong enough to give it back. She can even be strangled and maintain her composure, which is nothing short of miraculous considering the history there. But that specific type of violence… oh, she doesn’t freeze up until she’s dealt with the situation. She’s that strong, at least. But afterwards, she always needs a minute to come back to herself, to still her shaking and regain control. There were a few incidents when she was much younger, and she learnt to send her mind away when things like that happened, when people were doing that to her, and even though she’s an adult now it can still sometimes be difficult to stop her mind dulling to a sort of blank, oblivious incomprehension in the same situation. It’s a terrible weakness for anyone to have, and especially someone in her line of work and with her life, but none of her efforts to fix it have ever worked. If she weren’t so very tired, she’d be humiliated that Athos of all people had seen her like that.

When they reach the estate they leave the horses in the barn behind the house. It’s largely intact, and for a moment she considers just collapsing there, but he urges her silently inside and then down towards the concealed armoury. It will give them some safety if the Cardinal sends people here, at least. It will also be darker there, since bright daylight’s already invaded the stables, although at this point light’s not likely to stop her sleeping. They’ve ridden throughout the night. The horses are almost more tired than them, from the look of it, despite them regularly dismounting and the rest they got at Ninon’s.

Milady doesn’t look at the tree. She’s well beyond being able to deal with any emotions right now. There’s only a dull sort of persistence keeping her moving forward – _keep moving, just a few more steps, and then you can stop._ Once she lies down, she finds it hard to imagine ever getting up again. How long has it been since she’s slept?

He grabs a bottle of wine from the slightly-blackened cache on the way, downing most of it before they’ve even staggered down the stairs. She doesn’t understand how he can think about anything but sleep right now, but then, she’s not a drunk.

And then they’re in the hidden room – if she was less tired, it would probably be more traumatic, and then she’d snatch the wine off him and down her share to block out the ghosts as well. There’s the armoury with it’s metal bars, and over there past all of it, there’s Thomas d’Athos’s final resting place, unless the Cardinal’s religion is right and he’s actually burning in Hell. To her surprise, Athos doesn’t move the weapons and lock her up, but instead just dumps horse blankets, his cloak, and some thick, moth-eaten curtains stored down here for reasons unknown onto the cold stone floor right inside the secret door, making a kind of nest, as far from everything else as possible.

He gives her a questioning look, and she’s so exhausted it takes a moment to understand what he’s asking. When she realises, she just tugs uselessly at his arm, and he drops onto the blankets beside her with a sigh that seems like it’s torn from his soul. The layers dull the cold a bit, but it’s still chilly, and she presses against him for more warmth, following instinct more than sense. He wraps an arm around her for the same reason, to pull her close.

Sleep pulls her down. She’s only dimly aware she’s in her husband’s arms, cuddled against him like it’s five years ago, in the house where both their old lives ended; but her last conscious thought is that if she never does manage to wake again, she could be content with this.

X_X_X_X_X

She wakes slowly, almost in stages. At first she’s only aware of the warm press of her husband against her, the scent and feel of him, the steady throb of his heartbeat against her cheek.

Memory starts to return. Richelieu, after her. Treville and the Inseparables, disgraced and brought low. Madame Bonacieux, held by Sarazin but shortly to be rescued. Ninon, giving them food and a lantern and paper, for some reason. Athos, always Athos, occupying her mind to the exclusion of everything else, and currently occupying her life that way as well. 

It’s time for her to go. She didn’t cut her losses as soon as she should have, but she’s shrewd enough to know not to throw good money after bad. Not that she has any money at all, right now, but the metaphor’s enough. Sticking with Athos is unlikely to improve her prospects in any way, but is likely to end up with her wearing a necklace of rope again. Or perhaps with a stab wound through the heart or neck, depending on her husband’s mood. His rage had been lost in panic and then exhaustion, but she has no doubt it still exists. Better to leave before he revives it. Being back here won’t help.

She gives herself a few more moments, though, because it’s so lovely to be held like this again, her cheek against his chest, his arm around her waist. He smells of blood and dirt and wine, his sleep is considerably less even and undisturbed than it used to be, his body is hard and sinewy where once it was soft, and his hand at her hip feels calloused even through her dress and stays. But he’s still her husband, even now, and every part of her body knows it, relaxing against him like it’s six years ago. Like this, it’s hard to remember why she wants him dead. Has she gotten her revenge, she wonders? Is it done now? Everything’s so muddled, it’s hard to be sure what she thinks or feels. She can’t stop herself from rubbing her nose a little against the v of bare skin and chest hair revealed by his loose shirt, and letting out a hum of satisfaction at the feel of it, but the lust curling through her at the memories evoked by this handily disguises any gentler emotions, so that’s alright.

She should concentrate on more practical matters. Where to go, where to go? She has a few old contacts outside of Paris, but most of them even she considers unsavoury. Still, one has to start somewhere, and she’s an expert at beginning again from scratch. Find an opportunity, leverage it to create a better one, and then leverage that one as well – she’s gone from pickpocket to Comtesse before, from streetwalker to trusted servant of the most powerful man in France. She can do it once more. Paris is probably unsafe for her until both Sarazin and Richelieu are dead, but she has decent odds of outliving them both, and it’s not the only place in France to make a living. Besides, she’s fairly sure her husband’s friends will take care of Sarazin at least.

She starts to ease her way off Athos, every part of her body resisting the separation. She breathes out a faint sigh of relief anyway when she manages to completely remove herself from him without disturbing his sleep, then nearly lets out a shriek of surprise as his hand flashes out and grabs her arm before she can straighten.

“Going somewhere?” he says, blinking sleepy eyes open.

“Getting some food,” she snaps. “Is that allowed?”

“Right.” He gives her a look with absolutely no trust at all in it, but releases her anyway. He pulled the food from the saddlebags in with them yesterday along with the horse-blankets, so it’s nearby, and she goes and grabs some although she’s not particularly hungry. He watches her with hooded eyes. “I think we need to talk about last night,” he says eventually.

“What about?” She hopes he doesn’t want to talk about her waking in his arms. Some things are better not discussed.

He looks uncharacteristically uncertain. “What that guard tried to do to you…”

Oh, good, the only thing she wants to discuss even less – her momentary weakness and near-violation. She glares at him before she can stop herself. “It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” Really, he should know that. Does the life she lives seem a particularly safe one to him? He knows she grew up on the streets, as well, and must know the kind of things that women like that are subjected to. It’s only that she was very tired, and it had been a hard day, and it was unexpected.

“I see.” For a second she thinks he’s done, but then he speaks again, and this time his voice comes out low and halting. There’s something raw and agonised in it, like despite asking the question, he’s not sure if he can bear the answer. “Did my brother – did he really try to force you?”

There’s a long moment where she stares at him, where she swallows hard, where she fights to keep her face from showing any of the turmoil inside. Now? _Now_ he wants to ask that question? After everything?

“Why would I lie about it?” She asks in return, tired and pained, and winces at her own vulnerability. She makes a stab towards indifference, trying to remove the hurt from her voice, hurt him instead. “What motive do I have to do so now? To save our love, to preserve your good opinion? I think we both know that time’s long past.” Her tone is mocking throughout, but never more so than on the word ‘love’, and he flinches as if she’s struck him with it.

He doesn’t reply with the obvious assumption, _to hurt me_ , but instead stares at her with the desperation of a drowning man. He’s paler now, and his eyes are almost feverish. “Please. Just tell me. What happened in that room?”

He’s five years too late to ask that question, she thinks, pain crystallising into anger, which she prefers. How dare he ask here, now? In the home they shared, the place she killed Thomas, the place he sentenced her to death? The day after her life’s been torn to pieces thanks to him yet again? He has no right to do this to her, not when she’s so exhausted, stressed, confused, lost, heartbroken. No right to pull out truths he probably won’t believe to satisfy his own guilt.

“D’you really want me to describe it, Athos?” she says, and she can hear the cruelty in her own voice. He’s suddenly standing as well, gaze trained on her hand, and she realizes with some surprise that she’s drawn her new knife without meaning to. She felt defensive, and so she automatically prepared to defend herself, but to him it must look like something else. She doesn’t let that stop her. “The feel of the blade scraping against his rib, skewering his heart, splitting him open? The little gasping noises he made, like a fish on land, flapping about in its death throes? The look in Thomas’s eyes when he realised he was a dead man?”

He was pale at the beginning: by the end he’s ghastly, bone-white with pain. It takes several long breaths before he’s controlled enough to speak. “Going to do the same to me?” he says finally, voice cracking a little, nodding towards the knife.

She gives a harsh laugh and stows it back at her belt; it doesn’t fit in the sheathe as well as her old one, but it’s adequate. “I had my chance to do that, and I wasted it. I don’t believe in repeating myself.”

The double meaning to that registers with him, she can see it. 

She turns her back on him, trying to control herself, trying not to reach for her knife again. Instead, she reaches for her choker, to touch the little metal heart, still warm from being pressed between their bodies through their long rest. She wonders if it’s left a heart-shaped bruise over her scar from the pressure, or even a heart-shaped bruise on his chest. She was wearing a similar choker the last time she was here, she recalls.

She glances down and realises for the first time what a mess she is. Blood sprays, after all – her once-pristine dress has splattered brown stains decorating it from the fight. The shallow wound he accidentally inflicted is probably the source of most of it, though. She’s also been wearing this dress for days now, with no opportunity to clean herself up properly. With a sigh, her hand goes to her belt, and she starts to remove her outer layers.

“What are you doing now?” His voice doesn’t contain the earlier suspicion, but there’s still some alarm there. Seeing his wife naked is apparently a real fear.

“Cleaning up,” she snaps. “Don’t look so worried, I’ve got stays and underskirts on.” Sweaty and disgusting, no doubt, and a bit bloodstained as well in the case of her stays – perhaps she can try and scrub her dress mostly clean, then wear it wet while she washes her underclothes as well? To clean her skin she’ll just have to drag a sponge across whatever she can see. The days when she could have a leisurely bath here are long gone. “If you want to make yourself useful, you can fetch a bucket of water.”

To her surprise, when she glances back again, he’s gone, presumably to fulfil her request. Perhaps she could also be gone by the time he comes back – but no, if he caught her trying he’d bind her hands again or even lock her up, it’s not worth the risk. It’s not as simple as just getting out of the house, she needs to be sure he won’t catch up with her as she rides away, she needs a few hours head start. Hidden in her dress there’s still a little vial of drugs, and one of poison, though she lost the rest of the ether when she used it in the fight. She can buy herself time somehow.

It is interesting he now trusts her to be alone in the armoury without getting and loading a gun for use against him, though. She knows she won’t shoot him, not now, but she’s almost offended at him also knowing that.

She has three layers of skirts in total, and she sacrifices part of the second to make cleaning cloths and possibly bandages – the wound on her chest has long since stopped bleeding, but when she washes the dried blood off it might start again. From memory, Athos has a couple of injuries as well – one on his upper arm from the Louvre, and one somewhere low on his torso from last night. She doesn’t put it past him to have simply failed to mention if they need bandages or stitching, ignoring them as if that will fix the problem. Though why she should care about the health of her captor, she has no idea.

She removes the sleeves of her dress, then the rest of it, examining both the clothes she takes off and the underclothes she still wears to assess the damage. As she suspected, her stays are also bloodstained, but otherwise not as filthy as she expected. 

Athos pauses in the entrance, staring at her in silence. Her stays and underskirts cover nearly as much skin as her dress did, but the lack of outer layers makes her figure even more apparent, and it’s evident from his expression that this fact has not escaped him. Still, he moves forward and places the bucket of water near her. Besides the bucket, he’s grabbed several more bottles of wine – it seems that a decent amount of alcohol escaped her fire.

“I think someone might be staying in the servant’s quarters, but whoever they are, they’re not here at present,” he tells her. “A hunter, from the look of it.”

“I doubt they’ll know of this room, in any case.” She dismisses it as unimportant. It’s not like they have to go up there much, and even if whoever it is recognises one of them, they can easily terrify some village poacher into silence.

Athos seems distracted by the sight of her, his eyes fixed on the bare skin of her neck and chest. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says awkwardly, after a long pause, finally looking away.

For a second, her heart stops, because she thinks he’s talking about her scar, still covered by the choker. Then she realizes – the wound from last night, caused by his slightly-too-vigorous sword thrust. That’s what he means. “It’s fine,” she says briskly, to cover that moment of shock. “I’m cleaning it off now. What about your wounds? I noticed the one on your arm reopened.” She picks up a strip from her skirts and wets it, starting to scrub at the dried blood on her skin with slightly too much vehemence, risking reopening her own wound.

“Here, let me,” he says automatically, coming towards her and taking the scrap of material from her hand. His touch is much gentler than her own is, the cloth circling methodically until the skin is clean again. It’s too awkward a position to bandage easily, even with assistance, so she’s glad to see it seems to have closed up fully. She’s even gladder when the blood is completely cleaned away, because the slow drag of cloth against skin is stirring up more than she’s comfortable with, with him standing so close to her.

She returns the favour anyway, helping pull up his shirt to wash off the wound on his hip. She ignores the way his breathing goes unsteady as she wipes the cloth over it, but finds herself slowing her movements anyway, her eyes straying to the smooth planes of skin and muscle around the wound as much as the wound itself. It does require a bandage, but doesn’t seem to require stitches. Lucky, considering they lack the supplies to do so, unless their squatter has some. The wound on his upper arm he’ll need to take his shirt off for her to see to, though, and he tries to demur when she suggests it.

“I have seen shirtless men before, believe it or not,” she reminds him tartly. That her face is already flushed just from seeing a strip of his torso is besides the point. She finds her mouth is dry at the thought of seeing him half-naked, as well. She feels the heat rising from her skin, the shame of how much she wants and wants and _wants_ when all she should feel is rage. “Don’t play coy, it hardly suits the situation.”

“Scandalous,” he replies, with a hint of dry humour to his voice, for once showing no jealous rage at her casual pronouncement. After another brief hesitation, he pulls his shirt off with a wince.

She needs to stand close to him to clean off the wound, and she tries to keep her attention on it, and not on the heat radiating off him, and not on the bare expanse of scarred skin suddenly available to her gaze. She tries not to see the broad shoulders, the muscled arms, the firm torso, the curl of fine hair, the scattered freckles, and the play of muscle under skin, but she knows her distraction is obvious. Her hands tremble as she cleans the wound and bandages it, but he doesn’t say anything, and she can hear the ragged effort to his breathing and the way his skin twitches under her fingers.

“I’m done,” she says finally, and is shocked by the huskiness of her voice. She glances up at him to find his blue eyes burning, his face only an inch from hers, the same hectic flush across his cheeks as hers.

She doesn’t know who moves first, but when their lips meet, it hardly matters.

X_X_X_X_X

He draws her down to the puddle of makeshift blankets on the floor like he once drew her down onto their marital bed, the kiss never stopping, only changing. His hands shake undoing her stays just as they did then as well.

She’s been with many men since the last time they did this, but none like him, and his touch seems to melt every one of them away like last night’s frost. She rises against it, chases it with her body, gives it back with her own kisses and caresses, presses skin to skin until it’s impossible to tell where he ends and she begins. Normally she tries to subtly persuade men not to enter her, finishing them off in other ways, with her hands or her mouth, and if they show signs of obstinacy she at least attempts to pull away before they spend, because she’s cautious as only a whore’s daughter can be, but there’s no question of that here. Not with him. His every stroke brings heat with it and she craves it, but nowhere so much as inside her, where he once made a home for them both. He’s been a part of her from the first time she opened like a flower at his touch and realised there could be joy in this, so the push of him into her is never an invasion, only a homecoming. She might have expected fire (after all, homes burn) but this feeling is something else, not the ephemera of a sparking, dancing flame, but instead the dark, hot surge of blood calling to blood, as relentless and irresistible as the tides.

He licks at her neck again and she stretches, trembling at the feeling, a soft cry escaping her, but he avoids the choker, avoids the little dangling silver heart, avoids what the thick strip of ribbon hides – “break it,” she begs, and he does, the catch snapping with barely a sound, and then his mouth is on her scars, kissing at them as if he wishes he could kiss them better. It’s the apology he didn’t give before, and she feels it in every movement. She rolls them so she can rest her weight on him, sliding and writhing against him, calloused fingers stroking along her back, her waist, her hips; the bristles of his beard scraping at her neck, her breasts, her stomach. He touches her like he can’t believe the feel of her, like he’s never touched another and never will, like there’s nothing else in the world but her. He touches her like she’s a blessing, instead of a curse, instead of his curse. He licks into her like he’d forgo anything, even wine, for a chance at the taste of her.

When she angles herself, shifts, and takes him inside her, their sigh of relief is a shared one. _Oh,_ she thinks, _this is how it is, this is what should be,_ and something clicks into place in her chest and makes her gasp with the _rightness_ of it, surprising still after all these years. The throb of him inside her is as familiar as the sunrise and yet as necessary as water in the desert, and their sighs and moans and murmurs overlap as they move together, the heat rising and overtaking them. They move against each other with the ease of lovers who’ve drowned in each other’s bodies times without number, expert and knowing, every touch and taste right. His hands are on her hips, steadying and anchoring her as she rocks against him, as she presses her lips to his again and again, as their bodies merge and become one and their pleasure does the same, building and building. They are waves lapping on the shore, unstoppable and endless, they are the crash of the spray, fierce and essential, and then they are the undertow as it drags them down to the darkest depths of ecstasy, a joy that is too vast to explain and too deep to comprehend.

It seems right to stay wrapped around him as close as their bodies will allow as he spends, as she spends, as they both gasp confessions into the other’s neck, shoulder, hair, chest, confessions that are incomprehensible yet somehow impossible to misunderstand. The edge holds her and takes her, and if she sobs as she breaks, it’s only that it’s a feeling too strong to be held in silence. He muffles his noises with his mouth against her neck, but she hears them anyway, and keeps them for her own.

It doesn’t occur to her to pull away, and when she thinks of what happened in the days to follow, it’s only to think of the pleasure shared, of the press of skin against skin, the push of flesh into flesh. Months later, wracked with nausea, discomfort and fear, she will think of that moment and rail at her own stupidity; and many months after that, she will think of it with an even deeper joy than she feels now. But for the moment, she doesn’t think at all, simply lets the pleasure wash her away and leave her floating.

X_X_X_X_X

It takes a long time for her breathing to steady. Her earlier aches and pains return gradually as the rush of it wears off, and she’s sweatier and more dishevelled than ever, but she finds there’s an odd contentment and lightness to her as she peels herself away from him. He lets her go with a faint huff of disappointment at the separation, watching as she stands on shaky legs.

She feels she’s been dismantled, broken down to component parts, and she stands here and wonders in what shape she’ll come back together. Passion is easily dismissed, but that was something else, something _other_. It changed things, but what it changed or how it did so, she really can’t say. She just feels it in her bones. They pried skin open with worshipful touches and scarred raw flesh with gentle kisses, they bared their cracked and ruined hearts to the others’ gaze, and the unbearable intimacy of it all leaves their whole world shattered and bleeding and strange to them. But looking down at him she can see that openness to his expression already beginning to heal, the real world exercising its irresistible pull, and she lets the same feeling roll over her. She lets the wound scab, knit, disappear, leaving only a scar – but the scar won’t disappear, and her memory of this won’t either. This brief encounter made the truth obvious: her husband loves her, and she loves him, and perhaps that changes nothing, but now she has that knowledge carved into her bones.

She snags his shirt from the floor to cover her nudity, oddly shy under his gaze. She expects him to protest when he stands himself, but instead he pulls on his jacket without the shirt underneath and his braies and pants, and goes to begin checking over the weapons they took from their attackers last night. Practical matters, practical concerns, as if that can erase what they did. If the weaponry stored here is better, he can swap out the ones they took for these. She realizes with a faint sense of surprise that no part of her expects him to level the gun he’s holding at her.

Meanwhile, Milady uses the leftover strips of cloth to wipe down her skin, then starts to wash her stays and remaining petticoats. She’s not sure if she’s washing off sweat or memory. She’s conscious of his gaze on her as she does so, on her bare legs, her shoulders, her scarred neck; conscious of the conversation they’re not having, the pit in the centre of this small room they’re choosing to tiptoe around instead of fall down. What was that? What happens now? The questions are too impossible to answer: better not to ask them.

She wonders how guilty he feels, how much he must already regret what just passed between them. It couldn’t have been more inappropriate for what they are to each other – or for where they are, only feet from the family vault his brother rests in. She doesn’t care, but she imagines he must.

“I need more water,” she says eventually, turning to look at him. The water in the bucket’s brown with blood and dirt, but she hasn’t managed to get all the stains out of her dress. At least her skin is clean now, though, and while Athos’s shirt is no fresher than any of her clothing, it feels light, loose and cool, baring her shoulders and not even reaching down to her knees. Her feelings at being surrounded by the scent of his sweat she chooses not to examine. “Can I fetch some?”

“Of course,” he says, distractedly, focused on the gun he’s examining.

“You’re not going to stop me?” she asks, letting her mouth curve into a smirk. “Such trust.”

At that he looks up. “You won’t leave without your weapons and dress, and they’re staying here.” He’s expressionless again, arms crossed as he surveys her with apparent dispassion, but the intensity in his eyes gives him away. He adds with a hint of hesitance, “After what you’ve done – for yourself, for the Cardinal, for anyone who can pay you – I’d be a fool to trust you. Don’t you think?”

There’s something in his words that’s less a condemnation than a plea for her to persuade him otherwise. But she’s begged for his trust before, and she won’t do it again. Instead, she turns and heads up the stairs, dragging the bucket of dirty water with her.

She regrets it. The hidden rooms contain no memories for her, despite the people entombed there. She’d gone there once, when Athos showed her the whole house at the beginning of their marriage, but she never ventured down there again. There was nothing either romantic, comfortable or interesting about the place to draw her there – the crypt was morbid, the stone was cold, and she’d avoided weaponry back then for fear of somehow giving away her unladylike skill at combat.

The rest of the house is full of memories, though. She hadn’t burnt the past down, merely charred it. She sees the young Comte de la Fere dancing with his wife, kissing her, loving her; she remembers the Comtesse de la Fere laughing and teasing and glorying in the new world of riches around her; she recalls the tastes, sounds, scents and sights of a life now dead. And when she sees Catherine de Garouville standing in the centre of a blackened room, for a moment she thinks it’s yet another spectre.

Then the spectre speaks, shock on her own face, rapidly twisting to furious hatred. “Anne?”

“Catherine?” She blinks at her. The bucket of water lands on the floor with a thump, but doesn’t tip over. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I -” Catherine flushes red with rage, striding towards her. “What are _you_ doing here? You’re supposed to be dead!”

She’s not sure how to reply to that, though for a second she toys with the idea of saying _surprise!_ In the end, instead of replying, she simply raises an eyebrow and lets her mouth curve into an amused, condescending smile, as if it was foolish of Catherine to even assume she _could_ die.

“I thought Athos killed you years ago!” Catherine rants, eyes still bulging with shock and horror. She stops in front of her, all but hyperventilating in her unmanageable rage. “Hanged you like the scum you are, you murderer, you common little -”

Milady isn’t tied up this time, and it’s an easy matter to catch the hand that flies at her face before it connects. “Careful,” she says mildly, twisting Catherine’s wrist sharply so that the other woman squeaks in pain. She pushes her back a step with the grip. “It’s rude to insult someone while enjoying their hospitality, you know.”

She can feel her own rage bubbling inside her, carefully concealed. Catherine, of all people. What is this, a retrospective tour of self-righteous women who think she ruined their lives? Although Ninon at least is justified in her fury.

“You foul, murderous whore!” Catherine wrenches free, teeth bared like a rat’s, but makes no attempt to strike her a second time. Instead, she spits on her, surprising Milady with the vulgarity of it. “Thomas d’Athos deserves justice, and you deserve death! Why did Athos let you live? What dirty, degenerate little tricks did you trade on for your freedom? Promiscuous bitch!”

Before she can reply, Catherine’s turned and stormed out of the room, her rapid footsteps echoing. 

Well, that was unexpected. For a brief moment, she considers following her, but she’s dealt with Catherine enough for one lifetime. What is she even doing here? Wandering around a half-burnt house mourning her lost love? That seems… unlikely. Not to mention uncharacteristically sentimental for Catherine, who only ever seemed to care about Thomas as an extension of herself. No, she must be the ‘hunter’ Athos mentioned, but why on earth would Catherine need to take shelter in this burnt-out husk of a place? And since when does she know how to hunt?

She takes a minute just to breathe, knocked slightly off balance by this. She never thought she’d see Catherine again – or, well, if she’d ever thought about it, that would be what she assumed. Honestly, she’d almost dismissed Catherine from her memory. Oh, the woman had undoubtedly contributed to the hanging, but Milady had never felt especially betrayed like that – Catherine’s dislike had always been honest, and her spite predictable. It had been Athos who made the decision, and who carried it out, and she’d known him better than to think Catherine’s opinion had the ability to sway him.

“Anne? I thought I heard shouting,” Athos says, entering the room as if called by her thoughts. He’s got his hand on his sword, but some of the concern in his face eases when he sees her just standing there, not making any attempt to flee.

“I think I found our squatter,” she says, keeping her tone lightly amused. The sounds of angry footsteps becomes audible again. “Oh, and it looks like she’s coming back to continue our discussion.”

Milady’s opinion of Catherine rises considerably when she enters – she’s holding the gun steady, grip firm but not too tight, and it looks like she actually knows how to use the thing. Her expression of childish fury has eased to the blankness of true rage. Athos looks as stunned to see Catherine as Catherine was to see Milady, but she doesn’t react to his presence at all.

“For the cold-blooded slaughter of Thomas d’Athos, my husband in all but name -” Catherine spits out the words, gun pointed at Milady’s chest.

Milady opens her mouth to ask incredulously if ‘husband in all but name’ means they were sleeping together, because honestly, nothing seems less likely, but Athos interrupts Catherine before she can. “Catherine, put the gun down, now.”

The gun swings in his direction, Catherine apparently infuriated by the words. “You’re protecting _her_? Still? After what she’s done? Your precious wife, nothing but a liar and a thief, the murderer of your _brother_ -” Catherine breaks off, apparently registering their respective clothes for the first time. “Is that your _shirt_ she’s wearing?”

Milady takes the opportunity to try and move slightly closer to Catherine, while she’s distracted ranting at Athos. She doesn’t have a weapon, but if she closes the distance, she can definitely take Catherine. She very much doubts the other woman has skills at hand to hand fighting as well as firearms. She denies to herself that any part of her advance is because of the fire that sprang up in her chest the second Catherine pointed the gun at her husband.

Her step draws Catherine’s attention, and the gun comes back to rest on her. “This is all a bit dramatic, isn’t it?” Milady drawls, for want of anything better to say.

“Catherine, there are a lot of things here you don’t understand. Put down the gun and I’ll explain what’s going on, but I cannot allow you to shoot her.” With a sigh, Athos strides over and steps in front of Milady so that he’s interspersed between her and the gun. She tries to start forward, but he purposefully corrals her behind him, and she gives him a dubious look but lets him do it.

The gun’s now pointed directly at his chest, but Catherine does seem less certain of her course. “Get out of the way,” she demands, voice high-pitched and nearly tearful.

“You didn’t bring a gun?” Milady hisses to Athos, noticing this. Alright, she can hardly judge, since she brought no weapons at all, but unlike him she’s not exactly dressed. Besides, he made it clear she wouldn’t be allowed to carry one while out of his sight – with a flicker of amusement, she wonders if he’s regretting that now.

“She won’t shoot me,” he mutters to Milady out the side of his mouth, and Catherine shoots him.

X_X_X_X_X

The moment the shot’s loosed Milady is flying across the room, buoyed by the wings of fury, and she has Catherine against the wall, hands tight around her throat, cutting off her air. Catherine squeaks and fights against her grip, but Milady ignores her scrabbling fingers and concentrates on her eyes, watching the expressions flit through them – horror, impotent fury, desperation, and then, finally, fear. Catherine slumps, unconscious, and she could continue pressing and squeezing until the life is drained out of her completely, but there is still Athos behind her, and he’s bleeding. She lets Catherine go and turns back to him.

The bullet struck low, missing his heart by a considerable distance, but any bullet carries a risk of death, and this one’s worse than most. She places pressure on it, ignoring the spurt of bright blood against her fingers, the colour staining her hand, focused only on slowing the flow of it. She forces herself to concentrate, to think – her mind thrashes and flutters like a panicking bird trapped in a cathedral, and she needs to calm it, needs to do whatever it takes to ensure his survival. He can’t die. He _can’t_.

“A pad,” Athos says. He looks winded, his face bloodless and gaunt, and the words are a clear effort, but that he’s still able to speak at all is a good indicator. He moves his hands to take the place of hers – not as steady or as strong as hers in his current state, but able to stem the bleeding somewhat.

Milady nods grimly, grabs his knife off his belt, and heads for Catherine.

“No, don’t…” His voice trails off with a groan, but she ignores him for the moment, cutting off part of Catherine’s skirt with no thought to the unconscious woman’s modesty or dignity troubling her. She doesn’t bother to slit Catherine’s throat right now, although she intends to take care of that before the other woman wakes – there’s simply no time.

She pushes the wad of cut-off material against the wound. “Hold it,” she snaps at him, and then is up and moving before he can reply, not waiting to see if he obeys. She never spent much time in the servant’s quarters, but she knows where they are, and it doesn’t take long to toss Catherine’s now meagre belongings for needle and thread. She also finds a knife, longer and thinner than the one she has, and it will do. The bullet didn’t go through, and she needs to get it out of him. There’s no fire built, and it would take far too long to build up heat enough to cauterise, so this is all she has.

He doesn’t bleed out, and he doesn’t pass out, but it’s close. By the time the bullet’s removed, the bloody wound sewn, the layers of padding and bandaging woven around him, his skin has a grey tone to it and his eyes are closed. Every breath is almost a moan. But the bleeding has almost stopped, and he’ll live – knowing Musketeer foolishness, he’ll probably be riding about in only a few days, in fact. Still, she heaves a sigh of silent relief, letting herself slump back a little, tension going out of her.

How long has she been on her knees beside his prone form? It feels like hours of frantic fumbling and prying and sewing and swearing, but if it had been, he would already have bled to death – it’s probably only been minutes. Still, she glances up – she’s done all she can here, and over there is Catherine, and she could wake from her unconsciousness at any moment. She grabs Catherine’s own knife – just used to pry a bullet out of Athos – and starts for the other woman.

“No!” Athos orders, trying to heave himself upright.

Milady swears to herself and turns back, pushing him down again before he can ruin her stitching already. “She shot you, Athos.”

“A feat you’ve never attempted yourself?” Even grey with exhaustion and pain, he can still manage a glare. “Leave her be.”

“What, to get up and shoot you again? Shoot me?” She shakes her head. “No. She dies.”

“If you kill her,” he says, every word distinct and clear. “Then I’ll kill you.”

“No,” she says, just as clear. “You won’t.”

They glare at each other, caught at an impasse – of course he won’t kill her, not for killing Catherine, not for any reason. She’s sure of that, now. He’s just as unable to survive her death as she is to survive his. She wonders how either of them convinced themselves otherwise, how they’ve managed to turn nooses and knives and swords against each other when it’s becoming abundantly clear that they may as well be pressing them to their own throats. She wonders how their love came to be twisted to something like this, to something dark, and needy, and destructive, wonders how it’s no less powerful despite that.

“If you try,” he says, eventually, voice dark. “Then I will have to get up and try to stop you.”

Is he threatening to hurt her, or to split his stitches and hurt himself? She knows which is a more effective threat.

X_X_X_X_X

By the time she’s locked Catherine in the hidden armoury (minus the weapons), gotten all the dried blood off her hands and arms, finished cleaning her dress, dried all of her clothing in front of the fire, redressed herself and done her hair, and gone through the servant’s quarters for any valuables (finding a few livres and a necklace), Athos is halfway to sitting up again. The Musketeers must be blessed by whatever saint defends fools from harm, that’s the only explanation. His colour is already returning slightly. It appears she removed the bullet and stitched him up quickly enough to prevent too much weakness from blood loss – only time will tell if he’s caught an infection, but if not he’ll be fine.

She considered fleeing instead of fussing about with dresses and theft, but he’s still awake, and she doesn’t trust him not to find whatever nag Catherine gets around on and chase after her to his own death, the fool, even if she takes or lames his own horse. She still needs a head start, preferably one significant enough that he gives up before even attempting to race after her. She admits to herself she also wanted to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t start bleeding again, ensure her stitches held.

“Thank you for not killing her,” Athos says. He opens a bottle of wine with a tug. Now he’s leaning against the wall, he apparently considers himself well enough to return to drinking. She shouldn’t have fetched him up the bottles, of course, but he had looked so desperate for a drink she couldn’t bring herself to deny him. It’s a common problem – or at least, it used to be, but back then she never considered it a problem.

“You haven’t been down to the armoury,” she replies, looking down at him. “I might’ve slit her throat the second she was out of your sight.”

He doesn’t believe her for a moment, she can see it in the quirk of his eyebrow. Still, he asks, voice low, “Is it really so easy for you to end lives?”

“I am what you made me.” It’s a cruel cut, but it springs to her tongue before she can bite it back, changing the dynamic immediately from quiet conversation to real argument. She should get up and leave, but instead she kneels beside him again – like a penitent sinner, like a whore, and yet nothing at all like either. “All I did was prove you right.”

The comment leaves him visibly winded, but he fights his way back, replaces pain with anger.

“So you take no responsibility for your own choices?” His expression is dark. “Feel no guilt for them? It was only a few miles from here that you killed the man who saved you, killed him in cold blood. An innocent man. Do you really have no qualms about that?”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to barely avoid a rape, and then immediately have to whore yourself out to the nearest man to avoid a death sentence as well? No, I don’t feel guilt at Remi’s death. But you should, Athos.” She sees the strike land. Athos is so easy to provoke guilt in, and she’s spent five years teaching herself to become immune to it, so this is not a battle he can win.

“Remi was a good man.” He manages, his fingers clenched white around the neck of the wine bottle.

“Yes, once. So were you. And once I was good as well, as little as you might like to believe that. Everyone was innocent at some point. And everyone becomes monstrous eventually, as well – whether it’s because the world forces them to become so, or because they choose to be.”

“So that’s how you justify killing.” The disgust is plain in his face. He remembers what she is, now, but she remembers what he is, as well, and the warmth between them evaporates like mist in the morning – gone like it never was. 

“I do what I must to survive and triumph, and I always will.” Her voice is cold. “According to your morality I should have perished at the tree, or starved in a gutter, or died of the pox inside some stinking brothel, rather than do whatever it took to live. You left me with no options, and yet you still act as if I should live and die according to your irrelevant ideals of goodness? I’ve seen where the path of virtue leads.”

He huffs out a sarcastic laugh, although she can tell she’s shaken him. “ _Virtue_.”

“At least I know what I am, Athos. I’ll kill for my own gain and call it what it is – survival. You’ll kill and pretend it’s for duty, honour, France, anything so long as you don’t have to admit what you really are.”

“And what am I really?” Amazingly, it seems to be a genuine question, though he can’t expect the answer to be in his favour.

“The man I loved,” she says, poison dripping off her lips like honey. “And my murderer.” She looks away from his pain, his fury, trying not to drown in it, but it’s useless. “What you did to me… what you tried to do…”

“I’m sorry,” he says, so quietly that if she wasn’t alert to every noise he makes she wouldn’t have heard it. Her head jerks around at it. It looks like he shocks himself as much as her with the words, and they’re left staring at each other with nothing else to say. Eventually, chest hurting, eyes stinging, she lets out a dismissive snort that sounds too uncertain to truly fulfil its purpose. She doesn’t know what to think, what to say. Now, after all this time, he’s _sorry_?

There’s a long silence, after that, filled only with the sound of Athos drinking, his occasional little noises of discomfort as he shifts, and their quiet breathing. They breathe in time, but that means nothing – after all, he stole her breath, once. He stole everything, but he called her a thief while he did it, and that was justice. Viewed like that, her love for him is as horrifying as it is debilitating, and she misses the rage that drove her onwards, the fury that camouflaged pain and fear and heartbreak. There’s so much between them – love, hate, disgust, desire, grief, fury, loss, confusion, need, fear – and all of a sudden she can’t understand how they survive the weight of it all.

He looks suspiciously at her as she tries to steal the wine from him to take a swig herself, hand automatically going to his knife at her closeness. The brief truce of earlier is clearly over. Maybe he’s already decided it was nothing but a manipulation, and that her true character is as monstrous as he always thought.

“After all this, you still think I’m low enough to strike while you’re wounded?” she scoffs, stilling at the sight of the blade. She eases back slowly from the threat, giving him an unimpressed look, fingers loose around the neck of the bottle as she waits for his verdict.

He doesn’t give one. Instead, he frees the bottle from her grip again and pulls it away from her with a frown, then takes another swig, though every swallow makes him wince. A few moments later, though, he stops wincing as the drugs she just slipped into the bottle take effect. His eyes slowly flutter closed, and he slumps, the bottle going awry and the remaining wine spreading in a slow puddle that stains the floor like fresh blood – which has also recently stained this floor.

“Sadly, you thought correctly,” she says, watching as unconsciousness claims him. She feels a faint throbbing from the conscience she didn’t think she had anymore, but really, what is she to do? The Cardinal has already nearly found them once. He’ll be safer without her, and she’ll be safer without him, and God knows if he would ever have let her go – it’s even odds whether the others have managed to find Madame Bonacieux, let alone rescue her. Even if they have, who knows whether his promise or his duty would win out? Last time, duty won. She’d rather not bet her life on that having changed, just because of whatever closeness they found from a couple of days with no one but each other. It’s more than clear any such closeness can’t last. Sooner or later, he’ll go back to Paris, whatever the risk, and she can’t be with him when he does.

She should take both horses, all the food, and anything else that seems useful, along with as many weapons as she can carry. She should go down to the hidden armoury and slit Catherine’s throat. She should tie Athos’s hands and feet to slow him down. She should leave this minute.

She doesn’t do any of those things.

Instead, when she departs it’s several hours later, and she takes only one of the horses, less than half the food, none of the wine, a memento, and a tiny spark of life inside her that she’s not yet aware of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is less plot and more Athos angsting and staring to sort his shit out. But I'm thinking I'll write a sequel story to tie it up more, because apparently I'm really bad at leaving things ambiguous or open-ended.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, a chapter of angst :)

It’s dark by the time Athos slowly returns to consciousness, but he can’t tell much more than that. Surprisingly, when he reaches around blindly for the wine bottle, he instead finds a half-used candle – some more feeling about produces flint and steel as well. After a minute’s hesitation, he lights it, although he’s not sure why – Anne will be long gone by now.

She’s gone. It’s a strange thought, echoing in his head – he should be used to it after five years of her absence, but somehow it’s never stopped being a fresh wound. It mended a little when he realised she lived, despite his fury, but now it’s ripped open again. Anne’s gone, and he’s left rudderless and drifting, lacking even the Musketeers or his duty to keep him on tack this time.

She’ll have taken all the other supplies with her, no doubt, but it was kind of her to leave him light, he supposes. Not to mention his life, although that has little value to him, most of the time. She surprised him, and she betrayed him – well, if you can betray a captor, and if he was her captor still; the situation is so convoluted he can’t quite keep either of their allegiances straight in his head anymore. Whatever the case, she drugged him. He should be furious, and he is, but not at that. All his fury is about her leaving. 

He finds himself reaching for the locket, which is when he realises Anne is not the only thing that’s disappeared – where the comforting weight used to be, there is only air. For years he’s had the drag of it around his neck pulling him down, and without it he should feel light and free, but instead all he feels is a cold, creeping horror. What does this mean? Why take the locket? He slowly eases himself to his feet, ignoring the pain, and begins to search the place – she hasn’t tried to melt or blacken the locket in the smouldering fire in the hearth, or hidden it anywhere he can find upstairs. When he checks the room below, he finds Catherine is still alive in the hidden room (and feels slight guilt at not having considered this immediately on waking), but withdraws without waking her. The locket is nowhere to be found.

What _does_ it mean? Is she setting herself free of him, excising them from each other’s lives? Or is it a kindness, an attempt to free him of her? If it is, he finds himself even angrier at the thought, almost betrayed again by it. He thought he wanted to be free of her, but it seems he was wrong, because he can’t otherwise explain why the stolen locket feels like a missing limb. 

The room where he once promised her that nothing would ever come between them is a ruin, of course, like the rest of the house, and all that remains of the desk is a charred heap of wood. The locket isn’t there, but something else rests upon the wreck of the desk – a pristine little pile of papers, covered in the sharp strokes and impatient curves of Anne’s handwriting. He picks them up with trembling fingers and flicks through – pages and pages of writing, some of which look like lists, others thick blocks of text that must have taken some time to write.

He sets the candle down, eases himself to the floor, and reads.

He doesn’t know what he expected, but this is assuredly not it. It’s no sweet message of love (not that he was fool enough to expect _that_ ), it’s not a note swearing bloody vengeance, or a cruel missive denouncing him and his actions, or in fact anything with any emotion to it. Dry, that’s the word – there’s hints of her humour in some of the words chosen, but for the most part it’s just a recounting. It’s not exactly a confession, since it lacks her name, her details, and only barely reflects her viewpoint, but it’s a statement of things that have happened.

Or rather, things that have been said and done – primarily by the Cardinal, but also by the King. Their words are everywhere, sometimes obviously paraphrased or summarised, but even more often with the feel of quotation to them – Athos can easily imagine the Cardinal using this turn of phrase, or the King letting loose that exclamation. Anne’s memory seems to be a steel trap, judging by this, and nothing has escaped. The lists are lists of the Cardinal’s agents and contacts, the thick blocks of text are summaries of his past orders. 

The account doesn’t dwell on the details of what was done outside of the Louvre in response to these commands, only including the bare bones, so it’s almost disjointed in some ways – paragraphs stating the Cardinal’s exact instructions almost word for word, then a simple statement mentioning that it was carried out, no further information given. It’s enough for him to broadly recognise her part in each, though, to figure out where a command to get information resulted in his wife playing seductress, or where an order to remove a threat ended in a cold-blooded killing. However many specifics of her behaviour she’s elided, it’s not enough to completely conceal her actions, and he finds himself often letting loose a curse or barely resisting the urge to throw the papers down. He’s sickened by her actions, he’s jealous, concerned, furious, sometimes even impressed, and above all confused. Why leave him this?

Still, the bulk of the information is about Richelieu. Nothing is omitted there – or, well, some things probably are, since the account seems to mostly concern his most notable machinations over the past half-decade, but the level of detail about those machinations is startling. It’s enough information to stagger Athos. It’s enough information to all but destroy the Cardinal’s network. It’s enough information to make even the King look at Richelieu in suspicion, what with his own words, own wishes, own commands laid so starkly and undeniably across the page. 

It’s definitely enough information to blackmail Richelieu into Milady’s plan.

Why would she give this to him? This is the kind of intelligence that shakes countries. The casually-related stories of secret actions taken against Spain, England, Savoy, Rome, even against important French nobles – in the wrong hands, this could all but lead to wars, if it was believed. There are certainly people who would pay her significant amounts of money to have this in their hands, if they were willing to risk becoming a target of the Cardinal along with her. The level of detail is enough that no one could easily dismiss it as untrue, and if there are lies they’re woven around enough obvious truths that they’re difficult to spot. It’s the informational equivalent of a massive stockpile of gunpowder, able to blow the place sky-high or be portioned out to smaller bombs. Richelieu will go white with fury and perhaps even fear when he sees it.

She’s taken his locket and herself away, and she’s given him his life back in return.

He wishes fiercely she was here so he could explain that he doesn’t accept the trade, so that he could make her understand that he would _never_ have agreed to this, but perhaps she already understands that on some level, because otherwise why bother drugging him?

X_X_X_X_X

When it’s light out again, he makes his unsteady way down to the hidden armoury. Catherine’s woken from her sleep by now, and her eyes widen at the sight of him. He must look a mess, covered in bloodstained bandages, still pale and wan from blood-loss, but that’s not it – he realises from her expression that she’d thought him dead.

If Milady had chosen to take advantage of his weakness and turn a knife on him, he would have been easy to kill, but she could have killed him just through inaction as well – could have watched him bleed out on the floor without lifting a finger. He has no idea why she didn’t. Like all of her actions since she came back into his life, it’s inexplicable – he simply has to accept what she gives him, whether it’s a knife to his throat, a kiss in an alleyway, the betrayal that ruins him, or the help that saves him. She’s as mercurial as the weather, seemingly, but sometimes he glimpses the patterns in the chaos and as always, it leaves him breathless with fear and a strange sort of hope.

“I dislike being wrong,” he informs Catherine. He really hadn’t thought she’d shoot him. Not Catherine, his childhood friend, his brother’s betrothed. But then, they’ve all changed a lot since who they were back then.

“You haven’t changed a bit, then, have you Athos?” she sneers, directly opposite to his own thoughts. “Still in love with that hateful, murderous bitch. I can’t believe you would do this to your brother. Thomas d’Athos deserved better.”

He rubs his palm against his chin, looking at her. “You never doubted her guilt for a moment, did you?”

“No. Not for a moment. You could never see it, Olivier, you were too blinded by lust – but it was clear to me from the second I first saw her what she was.” Catherine’s face is still twisted in distaste, and he feels a surge of protectiveness towards his wife. He can remember when Anne and Catherine first met, how bright and friendly Anne had been, overflowing with happiness at her good fortune and willing to share that happiness with everyone around her. When she said she was kind once, when she was happy, Anne hadn’t been lying.

“Do you ever think about it?” Catherine asks. She looks unexpectedly brittle. “What our lives would have been like if you’d never brought that woman home? We would have been happy.”

“No. I don’t think of it.” And they would never have been happy, or at least, he wouldn’t have been. 

His life before he met Anne is laid out in shades of grey, despite all the beauty and brightness of Pinon – it was a life based on rigid guidelines, dutiful affection for his family and future betrothed, dry and lengthy books, and the crushing weight of responsibility and superiority his parents raised him to feel. A version of Athos who remained like that, who lived a colourless, pointless, arrogant little life, who married a woman he felt nothing but a sort of distant fondness for, who remained a blank and bland boy untouched by the world and separate from it – that man would not be Athos at all. Athos as he is now would look down on a man like that. Finding Anne – loving Anne – changed him so thoroughly and completely there was no going back, just as losing her did. There was no real happiness before her advent into his life. He hadn’t even really known what happiness was until he’d met her.

He still bleeds over with emotion when he thinks of her, whether she’s in the vicinity or not. He feels too much. His world is hot and alive with colour thanks to her, whether it’s the red of rage, the sickly green of jealousy, or the bright forget-me-not blue of pure happiness. His emotions are so intense that even wine can barely dull them, but they’re the sign he’s alive, as he wasn’t really before he met her, as he wasn’t when he thought she was dead. No, he doesn’t think of his life if he hadn’t brought her home, if he hadn’t met her, because he wouldn’t have a life at all, he wouldn’t be _him_. Duty was instilled in him from a young age, but his passion only ever came from her.

He takes that passion into every fight, tries to drown it in every bottle, dreams of it every night, but even if by some magic he could strip it out of himself entirely, he wouldn’t do so. There is no him without Anne, even if it’s just the memory of Anne.

He gives Catherine food, somewhat surprised that Anne left him any to share with her, and then returns upstairs again to brood. He’ll have to decide what to do with her at some point, obviously, and hopefully whatever he decides will not end with him taking a second bullet – but not right now.

X_X_X_X_X

He may never know exactly what happened in that room between his wife and his brother. But here is what he does know: there was no reason for Thomas to bring evidence to his wife instead of him. The most dangerous woman he knows would probably not be foolish enough to kill a man in broad daylight for spite alone. Proof of being a liar, a manipulator, and a fraud, was not proof of murder. And most importantly, there were no witnesses to the killing of Thomas d’Athos.

That means that what happened is uncertain, unknowable. It’s all a question of belief, and back then he chose not to believe her, because he was furious and betrayed and heartbroken, because the wife he loved had transformed before his eyes into a woman he did not know and could not trust. He feels old now, thinking of how rash he was, thinking of how he broke her and broke them and, ultimately, broke himself. No one should be executed if their culpability is in any doubt, but more than that, no husband should have the right to kill their wife, _he_ shouldn’t have had the right. He wasn’t seeing justice done for a murder, he was punishing her for her betrayal, for fooling him, for hurting him, for not loving him the way she claimed to. He was in too much pain to do otherwise – no, that’s a crutch, an excuse. He could have done otherwise. He chose not to.

He can’t fix the past, and he can’t change what he is now or what she is, but maybe he can finally admit that he committed a terrible wrong, _really_ admit that instead of equivocating with words – _duty_ and _cold-blooded_ and _no choice_ , all just shields against something too terrible to face. _My murderer_ , she’d said – the truth he apparently can’t admit, the one he’ll use to rouse his own self-hatred but not to acknowledge that her pain and fury is justified. Maybe it’s time to try for understanding instead of this toxic mix of rage and guilt. Maybe it’s time to stop feeling sorry for himself and instead just start feeling _sorry_. Maybe he should stop hiding behind those words, words like _justice_ , and deal with his actions, claim them as his own and accept the guilt.

He’s been guilty for years, and half the time he’s fought the feeling until he’s worn to shreds with fighting it, and the other half he’s wallowed self-indulgently in a mixture of it and wine. Perhaps it’s time to face up to it instead. Then he can admit she’s not a monster he failed to slay, or a mistake from his past he needs to correct, but a woman he betrayed because he felt betrayed in turn. A woman, not a saint, not a demon, just a person, a person who happens to be both the love of his life and the victim of the worst crime he’s ever committed. He made her what she is, but he can’t correct that mistake by repeating it, even when it seems like the easiest way. He doesn’t want to try and kill her again in some futile effort to still his own guilt. He wants to stop hiding from what happened, whatever form that hiding takes.

It means facing more than just his execution of her, but also all the things that have followed, years of terrible actions that he knows next to nothing about (although considerably more now than he did yesterday). Her murders are on his head as well, and while he thought himself resigned to carrying them, he realises that before now he always thought about that in terms of either delivering justice or destroying himself. If what she says is true, he drove her from minor criminality to murder, forced her into a position where the Cardinal was the only option she had, destroyed her so completely all she had left was the prospect of revenge. How much of who she is now is because of what he did to her? How much was her own decision? He’ll probably never know. Others might deserve recompense from her, but he has no right to expect her to show remorse for her actions, and even less right to demand it.

Even if he begins to truly comes to terms with his guilt, though, what can he do about it? She’s long gone. He’s been trying to atone for what he did for years, trying to get up every morning and help people and be better and make _something_ worthwhile out of the complete wreck he is. Now he accepts he is even guiltier than he thought, and now he knows she’s alive to make amends to, but she’s not here for him to attempt any kind of direct restitution. And what restitution could he make, anyway, for a murder? He saved her life from Catherine, he apologised to her, could that be a start? He’s beginning to realise he has no idea what redemption really involves, that the past five years of brooding and suffering has been a self-indulgence as much as anything. 

For that matter, it’s not like guilt is the only emotion between them left uncertain, unexplored, and maddeningly unresolved. _The man I loved_ , she said, and it’s not the first time she’s said it, but for the first time in a very long time he allows himself to wonder if it’s really true.

She chose not to kill him, she chose to save him, she chose to help him. Maybe that means she’s not the monster he thought her, or maybe it means she does care for him in some way, or maybe it even means both. Was Anne de Breuil a cruel lie, was every feeling fabricated? Or was her only lie about her past? She’s different now than she was six years ago, but he can’t say if that’s because she hid parts of herself then or if it’s just that these years have changed her as much as they’ve changed him. How much of their time together was a manipulation and a con? How much of the past year is a defensive façade? Somewhere partway between his joyful, innocent wife and the cold-hearted creature now serving the Cardinal exists a real woman, and he wishes he could see her. Only one person knows where lies end and truth begins, and she’s not here to tell him. Or perhaps neither woman is at all a lie. A tiger can gently clean its cub, and it can savagely bring down prey, but it’s still the same tiger – only the circumstances have changed. He knows from his own experience that you can love someone and want them dead, and have neither emotion be false. Was she telling the truth when she said she loved him? And if she was, how much of that love has survived his actions? 

Regardless of how she may feel, he knows now how he feels. It was there as the house they shared burned around them, it was there as she smirked at him in an alleyway, and it was there as she trembled and gasped against him before. His heart burns, squeezes, breaks, beats, and ceases at her urging, no one else’s, and certainly not at his own. Athos’s father had brought him up to believe that there were some things in life a man could not choose – he’d meant Athos’s position in life and his duty, of course, and that ultimately proved to be false, but the advice applies perfectly for this. Loving Anne is not a choice, whether she’s Anne de Breuil or Madame le Chapelle or Milady de Winter. Her murders, her unfaithfulness, and her duplicity may fill him with sick fury, but that has no effect on his love for her, and wishing otherwise won’t make it so. Whoever she is, whatever she is, he loves her, and just as there was no deliberate choice in beginning to love her, there is no option to stop. He often hates her as well, that’s undeniable, and in some ways nearly as fierce, but one feeling has never been able to choke out the other.

X_X_X_X_X

She left one of the horses in the stable for him, he finds out. At this point, he’s not sure why he’s surprised by it, but he is. For a second he’s filled with wild fury at himself for assuming otherwise – he could have been on the road after her the second he woke up, he could have caught up with her, he could have gotten her back – but then sense reasserts itself. He has no idea which way she’s gone, he can’t ride quickly in his current condition, and she’s armed now.

He rides to the tree, anyway, ignoring the pain in his side. For a long time he simply stares up at it. The shape of it against the sky haunts his dreams, the way it’s silhouetted in the sun. He could draw every branch exactly as it was a half-decade ago, could probably state to an inch how much it’s grown in the past five years. He can see her standing there as well, hear the creak of the rope. He shakes and sweats like he’s in withdrawal again, letting the memories flow through him, letting the horror overwhelm him. He imagines himself stopping it, leaping off his horse, bringing his sword through the rope; imagines it so fiercely he almost can’t believe he didn’t do it. He thinks he might be going mad, being back here again alone, now that she’s left. He prays for his brothers to turn up quickly, because if they don’t, he thinks they may find a corpse, the life sucked out of him by his own dark memories.

He searches the base of the tree, but there are no signs of the locket being buried there. He searches the crossroads she was supposedly buried at as well, and there’s nothing. He even wanders the meadow painfully, stumbling and wincing, as if he could find an abandoned piece of metal in such a field. The forget-me-nots are out in bloom now. 

He remembers the last time he stood beneath this tree, and remembers even more clearly what happened afterwards. From this angle the house looks so blackened and burnt it’s incredible to him that it even still stands after what she did. He remembers it burning, but at the time that seemed irrelevant compared to the sight of her in the flickering fire. He barely noticed the flames, the smoke, the heat, remembers instead how he curled into her, wanting only to feel her against him again, not even caring about the knife against his throat. He remembers the way she pressed her lips against the top of his head, something seeming so gentle about it despite the desperation, despite the fury. He remembers sighing her name out on the first breath in five years that felt like it brought air into his lungs, remembers all but begging for an ending, for her to give him that ending, that final release, longing for the press of her blade just as he longed for the touch of her lips. He remembers thinking that he would like to die in her arms. Yesterday, he nearly did, again, and he had the same thought, blood staining the floor, her hands pressing hard against him, her beautiful, desperate face inches away from his: _this is a better death than I deserve_.

And apparently, she agrees that he doesn’t deserve that death, because she’s gone, and he’s alive. His mind churns in sick little circles, returning to his earlier thoughts. He half-wonders bitterly if all these unexpected kindnesses – horse, food, Catherine left unharmed, and most of all, evidence against the Cardinal – are merely to drive him mad. Or is it like she said, is it that she became a killer only to prove him right, and now instead she seeks to prove him wrong?

The evidence against the Cardinal is so _thorough_ , that’s the problem. They’ll need to show it to him to blackmail him with it, or the Queen will, at least, and it’ll be immediately obvious who wrote it. Milady had said herself that Richelieu would never stop hunting her if she showed herself willing to divulge his secrets to others, and he’s sure she was telling the truth in this one thing – it’s consistent with what he knows of the Cardinal, after all. So she’s surrendered whatever last bit of safety she had by angering the most powerful man in France, gleefully left behind everyone and everything she knows, and headed off into the sunset without any resources, money, influence, or plans he can understand. Is the prospect of penury and probable death more attractive than remaining with him? He remembers how many death threats he’s made to her, and faces the unattractive idea that perhaps she thought fleeing was her only hope of survival – but if that was the case, helping him anyway seems counterproductive.

She was unwilling to give real evidence against Richelieu for bags full of livres and the promise of a fresh start, for all that was a game. Now, she’s given it to him for nothing at all. Does she see it as repayment for him taking Catherine’s bullet, the one intended for her? But she already fixed him up, already saved his life. If her view of their relationship is tit for tat, then he feels sure she no longer owes him anything, if in fact she ever did – he tried to kill her, she tried to kill him, he betrayed her, she betrayed him, he protected her, she saved him.

Unless… unless once again, she’s mirroring him. He apologised, however inadequate it was. He wondered before if saving her from Catherine could be a start to that, a life saved to begin to atone for a life ruined and stolen. Did she finally give him a truth to begin to make amends for all the lies she told him? Is that what the papers are?

But still, why did she leave? And why, _why_ take the locket? Was it a goodbye? Has she dumped it into a river, onto a street, in a random field? Will she sell it to a silversmith to melt down? Or is she wearing it around her neck, and if so, is it some kind of prize, or the heart-wrenchingly tragic keepsake it was for him, or something else entirely? His mind keeps returning to that point, again and again, finding it makes no sense no matter how many times he goes over it. It seems like an ending, but he can’t believe that, doesn’t want to believe it. Did she want a memento, sick of her only one being a scar? Or did she want to deprive him of it? Is it a final farewell, or is she implying she’ll return it someday when they meet once more, that he’ll see her again? If only she’d left a note – then, even if it said something caustic like _we are done with each other_ , at least he’d _know_ what she means by this. He tortures himself, running in circles, driving himself mad with possibilities.

By the time he passes out, he’s in real danger of running out of wine.

X_X_X_X_X

“Athos?”

Athos peels open an eye, only to close it again with a groan as Aramis’s face starts to come into focus. “Ah. It’s morning.”

“Afternoon, in fact,” Aramis says, a little dryly.

He should probably have slept down in the hidden room, but his head couldn’t handle sharing space with Catherine’s shrill complaints, and his heart couldn’t handle the memories of Anne or the scent of her still drifting in the air. Obviously, there are memories here as well, but while they’re no less vivid they are considerably less recent. Still, it was foolish – if the Cardinal had thought to send anyone here, he wouldn’t be exactly hard to kill at present, between the injury and the wine.

He manages to lever himself upright, and Aramis and Porthos are suddenly there helping and supporting him. He feels a little lighter, now they’re here, or at least less likely to try and hang himself from a tree. The Musketeers saving his life, once again, just as they saved it in those horrific years after he killed his own wife and lost his mind.

“Hear you’re an assassin now,” Porthos says.

“Not a very good one, I’m afraid,” Athos says with wry apology, amazed he can even sound like he’s alright at this point. “Caught him in the arm. I was a little hindered by not being the one holding the gun, though.”

Aramis nods at his chest, lively concern in his eyes. “Did Richelieu shoot back? I didn’t think the old man had it in him.”

“That would be my late brother’s betrothed.” Athos shrugs, then immediately regrets it as it sends a shudder of agony down his body. All of them accept this without question – he supposes that after all the other things he’s revealed about his past, a homicidal almost-sister-in-law is only to be expected. “She didn’t take kindly to me hiding out here. She’s locked up in the basement at present, but I suppose I’ll have to release her if we’re leaving.”

D’Artagnan is standing behind the others. When Athos looks back at him, he bows his head. He looks miserable.

Panic flashes through Athos. “Madame Bonacieux -” he begins.

“Safe,” d’Artagnan says shortly. “And back with her husband.” He meets Athos’s eyes now. “I’m sorry for not realising what was going on, before. I had no idea Milady was using us.”

Athos is about to assure him it’s not his fault, but Aramis speaks first. “Yes, where is she, by the way? We were under the impression from your letter that she’d be here as well. Is she down with your brother’s fiancée?”

Porthos shakes his head. “Your family,” he mutters under his breath, a sort of wonder in his voice at how screwed up they are, then shoots Athos a regretful look for even trying to make a joke of it.

“She’s gone,” Athos says, just as short as d’Artagnan was. “Escaped. What’s been happening in Paris?”

“Ah!” Aramis twists at his moustache, and tries to give Athos a smile. It’s worried, though. “We’re fugitives as well, at present, you know. The Musketeers are all officially confined to the Garrison. The King is debating what to do with us -”

“With Richelieu dripping poison into his ear, of course,” d’Artagnan interjects.

“And the Captain is held in the Bastille at present, but that seems to be mostly a slap on the wrist – according to Her Majesty, he’ll be released shortly, and probably sent to join the regular army at their encampment. Demoted and shamed only.”

“You saw Her Majesty?”

“Only briefly,” Aramis mutters, and the moustache-twisting intensifies. He doesn’t meet Athos’s gaze. “She wanted to express her trust in us. She’s doing all she can, but, well, you know.”

“I may have something else for her to do, if she would be gracious enough,” Athos says. He holds out the sheaf of papers reluctantly, and Porthos takes them. Handing them over feels like giving up the last link he has to his wife, and it hurts, but what else is he supposed to do? And certainly, the writing contains less of her spirit than the locket had. One was given with love, or at least what he thought was love at the time, and the other given with – what? He doesn’t know. It could perhaps be love, but it could be guilt, or some kind of mind game he won’t understand until he feels the consequences of it.

Porthos makes a low sound of amazement as he reads. By the fourth page, all of them are gathered, staring down at the papers with wide eyes.

“How on earth did you get this?” D’Artagnan looks stunned, but his expression rapidly transforms to something closer to triumph. A grin splits his face. “My God, it doesn’t even matter that she escaped, not now. As soon as Richelieu sees this he’ll be after her with everything he has. This could ruin him, destroy him completely. _We_ could destroy him completely.”

Athos exchanges a quick glance with Porthos and Aramis. Perhaps they could, but if they did, it would still leave Treville ruined as well and the Musketeers disbanded. Besides, their main goal has never been to remove Richelieu from power. Perhaps Anne would phrase it thus: there are certain moves you can make in this game to try and win it, but there are other moves that only amount to throwing the board across the room and breaking the game entirely. Even right now, in the Bastille and rightfully furious, Treville would probably agree – the Cardinal is necessary. Even if they could ruin him with this (by no means guaranteed), France requires him. If they destroy him and Treville stays out of favour, the King would be lost, thrashing about in confusion, and he would do incalculable damage. D’Artagnan will realise that soon. Right now, he’s still young enough to think that doing the right thing will somehow create the best outcome. It won’t. It’s a lesson they’ve all had to learn.

“What did you threaten her with to get all this information?” d’Artagnan asks him, although his attention is still entirely on the papers, eyebrows steadily climbing as he reads. “I knew she was in his confidence, but I had no idea she knew so _much_.”

Athos considers explaining to d’Artagnan that he hadn’t threatened Anne, hadn’t even tried to persuade her to give him this information. Oh, it had crossed his mind she might know the location of evidence against the Cardinal, but he hadn’t thought of using _her_ as evidence against him. After all, if it weren’t for the transcripts of conversations no one else should have been privy to and the host of little details no one else could know, this account would be nothing more than a series of wild accusations against the Cardinal. As it is, it’s very convincing. But it would not have occurred to him it could be before he’d read it.

But even if he’d known – no, he hadn’t tortured his wife, or threatened to torture her, and he never would have. They’ll believe him if he tells them that, and they’ll believe him if he says this was instead a strange kind of gift from his so-mysterious and treacherous wife, even though it seems so unlikely as to appear wondrous. The thought of doing so gives him pause, though. It’s one thing to assign selfish and ignoble motives to her actions in the privacy of his own head, but he’s not sure he wants to hear them do the same out loud. In his heart of hearts, he can’t stop himself believing this was Anne trying to somehow make things right between them – or if not that, at least her trying to keep him safe. If the others start guessing it’s revenge on the Cardinal, or fear that Athos will kill her otherwise, or any one of a dozen other, darker reasons, they will seem more likely to Athos, and he might have to consider them more closely. He doesn’t want to. It can’t do any harm for him to believe his wife cares for him – or, well, it can, but he finds he would rather be harmed in this way than in another one.

“How do you want to use this?” Porthos asks quietly. “Don’t think it’ll work forever as blackmail. He’ll move or kill his agents listed, frame some people as spies to explain all the information about the King, do whatever it takes to get his hands on however many copies we make of it. It’ll take time, but he will. Even with Her Majesty helping, this won’t get him under our thumb except briefly.”

“I’ll explain on the way,” Athos says. “Give me a moment to fetch my horse.” 

He dispatches Aramis to deal with Catherine, and the man goes cheerfully enough to let her out and give her a stern lecture on the imprudence of shooting Musketeers. Porthos and d’Artagnan continue to read, Porthos uttering the occasional “so _that’s_ what happened” as he recognises events.

Then Athos makes for the stables again.

X_X_X_X_X

It’s when he’s packing the saddlebags – he’s leaving most of the remaining food for Catherine, as weak recompense for the belongings he suspects Anne took when she left – that he finds the last gift Anne left, pulling it out of the bag with a soft noise of surprise.

For a moment he just stares at the little bouquet of forget-me-nots. The question of whether she left it simply as a calling card, like with d’Artagnan or Gallagher, occurs only to be dismissed. Between them, in this place, these have a very different meaning: the sprigs of forget-me-nots he brought her in the garden, the ones she dried for him for the locket, the flowers she dotted her hair with, the blooms like a carpet around the home they shared. 

The bouquet is neatly tied with a thick ribbon, and it has something hanging off it – a little metal heart. It’s her choker, the one he pulled off her neck at her request.

A trade, then: she took the locket as a memento, but left him another one in return. Her reasoning is normally murky to him, but he doesn’t think this is a taunt or a mind game, he thinks it’s her way of saying that what’s between them has shifted yet again, but not ended. If she had just taken the locket, perhaps it could have been a way to say the twisted relationship between them is over, but that’s not the message here. If he were a code-breaker of some kind, perhaps he could get more out of it, but that’s enough for him. With shaking hands he pulls back his sleeve and ties the ribbon around his forearm, so the little heart presses to his skin. It’s cold for a moment, but warms quickly against him.

“Athos?” It’s Porthos, standing at the door to the stables, looking concerned. “Ready to go?”

Athos clears his throat, blinks his eyes until he’s forced back any wetness, regains his composure, and quickly lets his sleeve fall down to cover the ribbon and its shining pendant. “Of course.”

Then he rides back to Paris, his friends beside him, evidence that could shake the world in his saddlebags, and his wife’s heart worn on his sleeve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'm definitely continuing this with another story. I enjoyed it too much not to!


End file.
